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Journal Article Most measures of father involvement with children have been developed for use with middle-class fathers who reside with their children. The current study documents the development and initial validation of a new measure of decision-making responsibility for low-income fathers with a nonresident child. Focus groups conducted with 71 fathers revealed two dimensions of decision-making responsibility: making decisions with respect to direct care of the child and making decisions with respect to resources. Surveys were then collected from 542 nonresident fathers to validate a set of items…
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Journal Article Objectives: An increasing body of research has documented the significant influence of father involvement on children’s development and overall well-being. However, extant research has predominately focused on middle-class Caucasian samples with little examination of fathering in ethnic minority and low-income families, particularly during the infancy period. The present study evaluated measures of early father involvement (paternal engagement, accessibility, and responsibility) that were adapted to capture important cultural values relevant to the paternal role in Mexican-origin families.…
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Journal Article Prior studies have found little evidence of an association between unemployment and child support compliance. However, few such studies used sample periods including a recession as severe as the one that occurred in 2007–2009 or a period following the Congressional mandate requiring states to adopt immediate wage withholding for all child support orders established after January 1992. While virtually assuring compliance by steadily employed nonresident fathers, this requirement imposes hardships on unemployed nonresident fathers, especially during recessions, because modifying child support…
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Journal Article Child maltreatment rates are strongly linked to adult male behavior, suggesting that labor market conditions, by influencing male behaviors, can influence maltreatment rates. Using the unemployment rate as the sole measure of labor market conditions, past studies generally conclude that employment conditions do not systematically influence child maltreatment rates. By contrast, this study found that state-level child maltreatment rates were statistically significant and inversely related to the state-level employment rates of men, aged 20 to 34 yrs old. It also found that the interaction of…
Brief
This brief explains the Two-Generation (Two-Gen) approach for working with families builds well-being by creating a solid and stable foundation through integrated, intensive, and high-quality services in four areas of focus: early childhood education, elementary education, economic stability, and family engagement. It discusses findings from a research study that explored how three States (Connecticut, Colorado, and Utah) are development and implementing a Two-Gen framework in practice and how support for an intentional Two-Gen approach can be translated into a coordinated implementation…
Brief
Research with fathers enrolled in fatherhood programs is often limited to measuring the amount of child involvement, since there are few existing quality measures that have been rigorously tested for use with low-income, nonresident fathers who are primarily unmarried. In this FRPN research brief we examined two short measures assessing the quality of father-child relationships to determine what measures are most appropriate for use in fatherhood programs. The measures are available for download here. (Author…
Brief
WorkAdvance is a sectoral workforce development program designed to meet the needs of workers and employers alike. For unemployed and low-wage working adults, the program provides skills training in targeted sectors that have good-quality job openings with room for advancement within established career pathways. For employers in those sectors, WorkAdvance identifies and trains workers who meet technical skill and work readiness expectations and can grow into second and third jobs. In a randomized controlled trial, the program resulted in large increases in participation in every category of…
Brief
A widespread stereotype about low-income children is that they have “deadbeat dads.” That is, that their fathers do not live with them and are not involved in bringing them up. In this study, Urban Institute scholars found that fathers who lived with their children tended to spend more time with them: helping them with homework, taking them to the extracurricular activities, offering emotional support, etc. In this study, we assume that positive fathering is related to child well-being. The key finding, however, was that this pattern held true for both low-income and high-income residential…
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Journal Article There is a widespread belief that poor men make bad fathers because they can’t or won’t support their families and are often absent from their children’s lives. The perception of the deadbeat, uninvolved dad has been fueled by national statistics about the rates of marriage, cohabitation, employment, and child-support payments among poor men. These national findings, however, depict averages and do not reveal the personal struggles of low-income fathers and the individual stories behind the statistics. A burgeoning body of social science research on how poor men engage with their children…
Brief
This brief builds on the insights from the Housing Opportunities and Services Together (HOST) Demonstration project to present an updated theoretical framework for two-generation models that target low-income children and parents from the same families in hopes of interrupting the cycle of poverty. The framework emphasizes the importance of using family goals as the lens for targeting individual family members, setting individual goals, and aligning tailored appropriate solutions. Information is provided on the benefits of two-generation models and the following components of the theoretical…
