Conceptualizing and Measuring Father Involvement

After decades of focusing on the mother's role in parenting, family studies researchers have turned their attention to the role of the father in parenting and family development. The results shed new light on childhood development and question conventional wisdom by showing that beyond providing the more traditional economic support of the family, fathers do indeed matter when it comes to raising a child. Stemming from a series of workshops and publications sponsored by the Family and Child Well-Being Network, under the federal fatherhood initiative of the National Institute of Child Health and Development, this comprehensive volume focuses on ways of measuring the efficacy of father involvement in different scenarios, using different methods of assessment and different populations. In the process, new research strategies and new parental paradigms have been formulated to include paternal involvement. Moreover, this volume contains articles from a variety of influences while addressing the task of finding the missing pieces of the fatherhood construct that would work for new age, as well as traditional and minority fathers. The scope of this discussion offers topics of interest to basic researchers, as well as public policy analysts.

Contents: Foreword. R.D. Day, M.E. Lamb, Conceptualizing and Measuring Father Involvement: Pathways, Problems, and Progress. R.D. Parke, S. Coltrane, S. Borthwick-Duffy, J. Powers, M. Adams, W. Fabricius, S. Braver, D. Saenz, Assessing Father Involvement in Mexican-American Families. L. Clarke, M. O'Brien, Father Involvement in Britain: The Research and Policy Evidence. W. Marsiglio, Studying Fathering Trajectories: In-Depth Interviewing and Sensitizing Concepts. J.H. Pleck, J.L. Stueve, A Narrative Approach to Paternal Identity: The Importance of Parental Identity: "Conjointness." D.C. Dollahite, A Narrative Approach to Exploring Responsible Involvement of Fathers With Their Special-Needs Children. S.S. Chuang, M.E. Lamb, C.P. Hwang, Internal Reliability, Temporal Stability, and Correlates of Individual Differences in Paternal Involvement: A 15-Year Longitudinal Study in Sweden. S. Gavazzi, A. Schock, A Multimethod Study of Father Participation in Family-Based Programming. C. Yang, C.H. Hart, D.A. Nelson, C.L. Porter, S.F. Olsen, C.C. Robinson, S. Jin, Fathering in a Beijing, Chinese Sample: Associations With Boys' and Girls' Negative Emotionality and Aggression. K. Pasley, S.L. Braver, Measuring Father Involvement in Divorced, Nonresident Fathers. M.J. Carlson, S.S. McLanahan, Early Father Involvement in Fragile Families. R.D. Day, A. Acock, Youth Ratings of Family Processes and Father Role Performance of Resident and Nonresident Fathers. K.M. Harris, S. Ryan, Father Involvement and the Diversity of Family Context. B.A. McBride, S.J. Schoppe, M-H. Ho, T.R. Rane, Multiple Determinants of Father Involvement: An Exploratory Analysis Using the PSID-CDS Data Set. A.S. Fuligni, J. Brooks-Gunn, Measuring Mother and Father Shared Caregiving: An Analysis Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics--Child Development Supplement. G.L. Fox, M.L. Benson, Violent Men, Bad Dads? Fathering Profiles of Men Involved in Intimate Partner Violence. V.L. Gadsden, J. Fagen, A. Ray, J.E. Davis, Fathering Indicators for Practice and Evaluation: The Fathering Indicators Framework. N. Cabrera, K. Moore, J. Bronte-Tinkew, T. Halle, J. West, J. Brooks-Gunn, N. Reichman, J. Teitler, K. Ellingsen, C.W. Nord, K. Boller, The DADS Initiative: Measuring Father Involvement in Large-Scale Surveys.