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Journal Article
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in early childhood and developmental outcomes during the middle childhood and adolescent years have been understudied among low-income Black families. The authors tested a model linking economic hardship, single mothers' parenting stress, ACEs, and nonresident fathers' involvement in early childhood to behavior problems in middle childhood and adolescence. The authors used six waves of longitudinal data from a subsample of 800 unmarried Black mothers, nonresident fathers, and their children (at child birth and ages 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15) from the Fragile…
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Journal Article
The aim of the Baby Elmo Program is to establish a low-cost, sustainable parenting and structured visitation program for non-custodial incarcerated teen parents. The program is taught and supervised by probation staff in juvenile detention facilities and unlike traditional programs, this intervention is not based on increasing the teen's abstract parenting knowledge, but rather in building a relationship between the teen and his child. The sessions target the interactional quality of the relationship by introducing relationship, communication, and socio-emotional enhancing techniques.…
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Journal Article
Background: Paternal depressive symptoms are associated with children's emotional and behavioural problems, which may be mediated by negative parenting. But there is no research on the influence of paternal depressive symptoms on children's emotion regulation and limited literature investigating fathers’ parenting as a mediator in the pathway between paternal depressive symptoms and children's externalizing and internalizing problems. We aimed to investigate the mediating role of father–child conflict (at 3 years) in the association between postnatal paternal depressive symptoms (at 9 months…
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Journal Article
Contact between children and divorced fathers is often believed to strengthen the negative effect of interparental postdivorce conflict on children's well-being. Although this is a well-known hypothesis, there is surprisingly little evidence for it. This article examines the hypothesis using large-scale nationally representative data on secondary school students in the Netherlands. The hypothesis is tested using interactions of conflict with postdivorce contact and interactions of conflict with co-parenting. We find that children of divorced parents have more depressive symptoms than children…
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This article begins to build knowledge of how non-violent coercive controlling behaviours can be central to children's experiences of domestic violence. It considers how children can be harmed by, and resist, coercive controlling tactics perpetrated by their father/father-figure against their mother. Already, we know much about how women/mothers experience non-physical forms of domestic violence, including psychological/emotional/verbal and financial abuse, isolation and monitoring of their activities. However, this knowledge has not yet reached most research on children and domestic violence…
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The present study adopts a randomized experimental design to evaluate the impact of a father-mediated therapy to improve the play skills, affect, language, social skills and behavior among 30 clinically diagnosed autistic children at the age of 3-5 years. Standardized inventories such as, The Play Based Observation (PBO), The Griffiths Mental Developmental Scales (GMDS), The Vineland Social Maturity Scale (VSMS) and the Rendel Shorts Questionnaire were administered pre and post intervention. A special program that involved fathers in the caregiving and nurturing processes of these children…
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Background: Fathers have unique influences on children's development, and particularly in the development of social skills. Although father-child relationship influences on children's social competence have received increased attention in general, research on fathering in families of children with developmental delays (DD) is scant. This study examined the pathway of influence among paternal intrusive behaviour, child social skills and child self-regulatory ability, testing a model whereby child regulatory behaviour mediates relations between fathering and child social skills. Methods:…
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The present study modeled the associations between adolescent mothers’ and young fathers’ perceptions of partner conflict, parenting alliance, fathers’ prenatal involvement, and father engagement with infants using a sample of 127 adolescent mothers and their partners. This study hypothesized that (a) higher quality parenting alliances would be associated with increased father engagement with infants, (b) prenatal partner conflict would have a negative spillover effect on the parenting alliance and father engagement during infancy, and (c) fathers’ prenatal involvement would be positively…
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Many studies reported that father involvement is associated with a wide range of developmental outcomes; however, evidence is weaker when controlling for correlated mother involvement and when using different informants to assess father involvement and children development. Our study aimed to research the association between father involvement and preschoolers' social competence, controlling for mother involvement, family demographics, parental stress, time spent in day-care, existence of siblings and child's characteristics. Participants were 295 children between 36 and 71 months of age, 52…
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Military fathers of young children often endure repeated separations from their children, and these may disrupt the early parent–child relationship. Postdeployment reunification also poses challenges; disruptions that have occurred must often be repaired in the context of heightened emotions on the part of each family member at a time when fathers are themselves readjusting to the routines and responsibilities of family life. The current study employed qualitative research with the central aim of informing a richer understanding of these experiences. Interviews were conducted with 14 military…
