Suchergebnisse

The present study examined whether fathers' additive risk and resilience when the child is an infant and age 5 predicted paternal engagement with children at age 5. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (N = 4,898), we found that the results confirmed the hypothesis that early risk has a negative effect and early resilience has a positive effect on engagement 4 years later. Later father risk had a stronger negative effect on nonresidential fathers than on residential fathers. The effect of early father risk on engagement at age 5 was moderated by father engagement during infancy. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Despite overrepresentation of fathers as perpetrators in cases of severe physical child abuse and neglect, the role they play in shaping risk for physical child abuse and neglect is not yet well understood. This article reviews the possible father pathways that may contribute to physical child abuse and neglect risk and their existing empirical support. The present empirical base implicates a set of sociodemographic factors in physical maltreatment risk, including fathers' absence, age, employment status, and income they provide to the family. As well, paternal psychosocial factors implicated in physical child maltreatment risk include fathers' abuse of substances, their own childhood experiences of maltreatment, the nature of fathers' relationships with mothers, and the direct care they provide to the child. However, the empirical base presently suffers from significant methodological limitations, preventing more definitive identification of risk factors or causal processes. Given this, the present article offers questions and recommendations for future research and prevention.

AbstractThis study used the data from 64 nonresidential fathers who had their children placed in foster care to describe their characteristics. The survey included questions about demographic background and personal challenges, the father's involvement with his child in foster care, the father's relationship with the mother, barriers to the father's involvement, and the relationship with child welfare agencies and workers. The average age of the participants was about 39 years, and the majority of them were African American. About 70% of the fathers reported low levels of education. Almost 69% of fathers reported frequent face‐to‐face contact with their children. On average, the participants were arrested 2.6 times, and it ranged from 0 to 34. More research is necessary to learn more about these fathers, develop programs to help them become a viable source for permanency option, and become more involved in their children's lives.

AbstractLimited understandings exist about non‐resident fathers' views of their involvement with their children in foster care placements. Guided by the ecological systems framework, the purpose of this exploratory study was to gain insights into fathers' perceptions of their involvement with a child in foster care. Data were collected from demographic questionnaires and two focus groups with 17 men. Fathers expressed how kinship compared with non‐kinship placements affected their involvement. Fathers were also in agreement that their financial hardships were a significant factor affecting their involvement. Several fathers also reported how they experienced discrimination in the child welfare system as men. Surprisingly, uncommon to findings from other studies, few men viewed the child's mother as being a barrier to their involvement. The findings provide insights into factors requiring attention to help non‐residential fathers become involved with their children.

This study set out to examine father-related factors predicting maternal physical child abuse risk in a national birth cohort of 1,480 families. In-home and phone interviews were conducted with mothers when index children were 3 years old. Predictor variables included the mother—father relationship status; father demographic, economic, and psychosocial variables; and key background factors. Outcome variables included both observed and self-reported proxies of maternal physical child abuse risk. At the bivariate level, mothers married to fathers were at lower risk for most indicators of maternal physical child abuse. However, after accounting for specific fathering factors and controlling for background variables, multivariate analyses indicated that marriage washed out as a protective factor, and on two of three indicators was linked with greater maternal physical abuse risk. Regarding fathering factors linked with risk, fathers' higher educational attainment and their positive involvement with their children most discernibly predicted lower maternal physical child abuse risk. Fathers' economic factors played no observable role in mothers' risk for physical child maltreatment. Such multivariate findings suggest that marriage per se does not appear to be a protective factor for maternal physical child abuse and rather it may serve as a proxy for other father-related protective factors.