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Journal Article Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine associations between parental socialization values (including inconsistency in values), parenting practices, and parental involvement in their children's education. Altogether 242 Estonian mothers and fathers of first-grade children participated in the study. We found that mothers were overall more involved in their children's education than fathers. Whereas emphasis on social values at home was related to paternal and (marginally) to maternal home-based academic involvement, emphasis on self-direction values at home among mothers…
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Journal Article This pilot study reports the preliminary evaluation of an emotion socialization parenting program for fathers of preschool children. The program, Dads Tuning in to Kids (DadsTIK), is a specifically modified version of a universal evidence-based prevention program, Tuning in to Kids (Havighurst & Harley, 2007). DadsTIK teaches fathers emotion coaching parenting skills that have previously been linked to children's social-emotional competence and fewer behavior problems. The 7-session (14 hours total) group program was delivered to 43 fathers who completed pre- and post-program…
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Journal Article More than 1.5 million children have a father in prison, yet little is known about what fathers experience as parents while detained. The author describes common issues that more than 250 fathers have raised during 4-week fathering groups at a federal holding facility. Issues center on their concerns about how to interact with their children and with the mother(s) of their children. Suggestions for work with the fathers and, by extension, their family members are discussed. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article Although often eagerly anticipated, reunification after deployment poses challenges for families, including adjusting to the parent-soldier's return, re-establishing roles and routines, and the potentially necessary accommodation to combat-related injuries or psychological effects. Fourteen male service members, previously deployed to a combat zone, parent to at least one child under seven years of age, were interviewed about their relationships with their young children. Principles of grounded theory guided data analysis to identify key themes related to parenting young children after…
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Journal Article The situation of children exposed to intimate partner violence ( IPV) raises certain issues related to child neglect. Little is known about how children exposed to IPV perceive and describe their living conditions. This paper addresses this lack by analysing aspects of fathers' care in descriptions given by children whose fathers have subjected the mothers to IPV. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 10 children aged 8-12 years. Three themes constitute the results. First, the fathers are not described by the children as engaged and responsible care providers. Second, in their…
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Journal Article Fathers' interactions with their young children are understudied. Variations between families in the masculine nurturance of toddlers can be expected, depending on personal characteristics, gender, family structures, and cultural contexts in which they are situated. This is a qualitative study, focusing on probing the nature of the exchanges between female toddlers and their male caregivers, to gain an understanding of the dynamic nature of these interchanges. We observed four thriving 30-month-old girls in Italy, the UK, Peru, and Thailand, wherein filmed transactions between them and their…
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Journal Article In the past 20 years, social change and expectations for both maternal and paternal responsibilities have highlighted the need for services for families to better understand the role of a father in family relationships. In Australia, as well as internationally, there have been many contested understandings about what constitutes "good fathering" in research, social media and in the political sphere. More specifically, there has also been an emerging trend to understand the challenging task of recruiting and maintaining men's involvement in child and family services programmes, particularly…
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Journal Article Fathers' and mothers' views on mothers' satisfaction with paternal behaviour as well as the respective processes of origination were studied in 393 cohabiting couples from three different stages of the family life cycle. Data on paternal competence and the couples' relationship characteristics were included as predictors in multiple regression analyses, and the stages of the family life cycle were taken into account with multigroup regression analyses. Results showed that the mothers were more satisfied with paternal behaviour than the fathers thought the mothers were. Moreover, mothers were…
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Journal Article High rates of imprisonment among American fathers have motivated an ongoing examination of incarceration's role in family life. A growing literature suggests that incarceration creates material and socioemotional challenges not only for prisoners and former prisoners but also for their families and communities. The authors examined the relationship between fathers' incarceration and one such challenge: the housing insecurity of the mothers of their children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,125) and a series of longitudinal regression models, they found…
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Journal Article Recent models on parenting propose different roles for fathers and mothers in the development of child anxiety. Specifically, it is suggested that fathers' challenging parenting behavior, in which the child is playfully encouraged to push her limits, buffers against child anxiety. In this longitudinal study, we explored whether the effect of challenging parenting on children's social anxiety differed between fathers and mothers. Fathers and mothers from 94 families were separately observed with their two children (44 % girls), aged 2 and 4 years at Time 1, in three structured situations…
