Father-Child Relationships

This entry discusses father-child relationships, which encompass interactions, thoughts, and emotions between a father and his children across the life span of both. Father-child relationships shape the development and life satisfaction of both fathers and children through direct effects of father-child contacts and through indirect effects such as fathers' economic provisions for children, the quality of the father's relationship with the child's mother, and children's peers' attitudes toward parental authority. The quality, intensity, centrality, and perceived importance of father-child relationships fluctuate as both children and fathers develop and experience changes in other aspects of their lives such as schooling, work, friendships, family formation and dissolution, and coresidence. Father-child relationships have become an area of increased focus in social science research and social policy since the mid-1970s, paralleling rapidly changing norms for gender equity in work and family. Decreases in men's earning power have been accompanied by increasing participation of women in paid work. Public attention to fathering has also been fueled by debates about topics relevant to father-child relationships, such as divorce, single-parent households, teen pregnancy, nonmarital childbearing, responsible fatherhood, and paternal rights.

In developed nations, two paradoxical patterns of father-child relationships have increased concurrently: (1) greater involvement by fathers in the lives of their children and (2) growing prevalence of father absence. These trends are moderately associated with, though not solely determined by, economic status, educational attainment, and ethnicity. Middle- and upper-class fathers are generally expected to have increased involvement with their children in comparison with previous generations. Social norms pressure middle-class fathers to be involved in childcare and education in addition [Page 675]to playing with children and providing financial support. Mounting evidence indicates that, on average, contemporary middle-class fathers are involved in these activities with their children to a greater degree than their own fathers were. In the lower class, by contrast, there is greater risk for father absence associated with a higher prevalence of multipartner fertility, nonresidential fathering, higher incarceration rates, and frequently shifting household composition. Generally, lower educational attainment is associated with decreased employment opportunity and barriers to providing a living wage in the legitimate marketplace. A significant proportion of fathers below the poverty level engage in illicit activities to provide economically for their families. These latter patterns are associated with increased risk for violence and judicial intervention, placing continued father involvement at risk. These divergent patterns of family life account for the simultaneous trends of greater father involvement and greater father absence. Approximately 1 in 4 children in the United States live in father-absent homes and approximately 1 in 20 live in single-father homes. Most U.S. children now spend a portion of their lives in father-absent homes because of divorce, separation or relationship dissolution, or paternal incarceration, placing increased emphasis on research, intervention, and policies that target nonresidential fathers.