Father Involvement: Conceptualizing, Synthesizing, and Testing the Effects on Children’s Behavioral, Socioemotional, and Educational Outcomes at Middle Childhood
Abstract
A systematic search was conducted across eight databases using the keywords: “measure*, scale*, father* or paternal*, and involve*. A final sample of 17 studies were identified for a systematic review. A total of eleven (five child-reported and six father-reported) father involvement scales were used in the studies. Guided by a heuristic contextual model of father involvement, secondary data from Waves 5 and 9 of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study were analyzed to assess the effects of father involvement (mother and father report of father involvement) at five years of age on children’s internalizing, externalizing, and delinquency behaviors and nine years of age and the effects of father involvement on academic performance measured at middle childhood. The findings of the systematic review offer foundational support to expand evidence-based practices of parenting techniques to responsible fatherhood programs. Path analyses found that mother-reported father involvement was significantly negatively predictive of child externalizing behaviors in girls and delinquency in boys, and significantly positively predictive of academic performance in boys, even after controlling for the effects of father age, socioeconomic status/income, education, relationship with child’s mother, and health, and including the effects of mother involvement in the models. Mother involvement was significantly positively predictive of child externalizing in girls and delinquency in boys.