Kevin M. Roy
Are we living through the “end of men” (Rosin, 2010)? Is this a time to reimagine men’s roles at work and in families (Romano and Dokoupil, 2010)? Popular media in the United States suggests that this may be the case, and men’s daily experiences and social science research show that fatherhood has likely undergone important shifts in recent decades. The traditional assumption that fathers are defined by their ability to provide financially for their families has grown into the requirement that men obtain the package deal – a good job, home ownership, marriage, and fatherhood (Townsend, 2002). This configuration of residence, relationships, and employment increasingly becomes the line that divides “good fathers” and “bad fathers.”
These two types of fathers seem to reflect the increasing inequality that we recognize in contemporary societies. Fatherhood research has tended toward basic distinctions between provider fathering in families where men are married, coresidential, and employed and have a substantial amount of resources or capital, and nonprovider fathering of men who move in and out of families as nonresidential, sporadically employed, cohabiting or unmarried, and lacking resources or capital (Marsiglio and Roy, 2012). But more importantly, these categories are too simplistic to capture the vast diversity of men’s experiences in contemporary society. As we discover more about men’s roles as parents, questions have continued to multiply about what we still do not understand.
In this review of the literature, I focus on over 300 studies (2004–2012) primarily from the United States to provide an up-to-date perspective on fatherhood. I introduce new debates, reopen ongoing discussions, and mark critical shifts in the ways that fathers work, play, and strive – and in the ways that we frame their lives. Due to the wide range of emergent changes in family life over the past 30 years, our approach to fatherhood has become more attuned to diverse ecological contexts and to many textures of parenting processes.
The chapter is divided into four sections. First, I examine changing expectations for men in families, as fathers who once strived to be breadwinners/providers now also embrace nurturance and caregiving reflected in a “new fatherhood” that is commonplace in modern societies such as the United States. I also review research on coparenting and partnering processes between fathers and mothers. Research on coresidence and household division of labor continues to illuminate understanding of family life, and studies of what happens after these relationships end – in separation and divorce, and through child support – add new dimensions. Third, I focus on men’s nurturance of children over time and take special note of how father involvement has been demonstrated to influence children’s well-being, from childhood through adulthood. Finally, I explore challenges to new fatherhood in a review of emerging findings on incarceration, immigration, mental health concerns, and broad social consequences of inequality that reshape fathering on a daily basis.
In contrast to strict provider roles, men in the United States are more involved as fathers than in previous decades, as measured in terms of the amount of time they spend each week caring for their children, including play, monitoring, physical care such as hygiene and feeding, transportation, and household duties (Sayer, Bianchi, and Robinson, 2004). These patterns of increased father involvement suggest a kind of nurturance among fathers, a term that defines who men are and what they do as fathers, both in conduct and consequences for children’s development (Marsiglio and Roy, 2012). Responsiveness is another concept that recognizes men’s active interaction with children and speculates on how that engagement can influence children and men themselves (Holmes and Huston, 2010; Ashbourne, Daly, and Brown, 2011). Fathers are key players in complex patterns of play and talk, which are shaped as well by race, culture, and interaction with mothers (Cabrera et al., 2004).
Child care is still portrayed largely as women’s work, but recent evidence shows that fathers are not only more involved but more highly value their involvement (Pleck and Masciadrelli, 2004). Mothers and fathers are both attentive to how men gain skills as caregivers, and fathers feel more effective as parents as they do more with children (Barry et al., 2011). However, becoming a “new father” who successfully provides and cares for children is not an easy transition. The majority of men and women think that being a father today is more challenging than in the 1970s and 1980s (Parker, 2007).
Some men are better positioned to be new fathers than are others. Men in professional occupations may have more time, money, or status to recraft their identities as involved caregivers and providers (Plantin, 2007). Compared to men in nonmarital relationships, married men gather more social capital (Ravanera, 2007). These extensive resources may enable some fathers to rework traditional expectations of work commitments, gendered parenting, power dynamics, and emotional trade-offs in daily family interaction (Matta and Knudson-Martin, 2006). Resources acquired as providers may enable some men to be more successful than others as nurturing new fathers.
The economic fortunes of fathers have diverged dramatically since the 1970s, especially for young men without high school degrees who do not live with their children (Sum et al., 2011). Recent economic crises have hit men in families hard, and a renewed focus on provision may tell us more about challenges for new fathers. What was once routine for many American men – a good wage to support a family, down payment on a house, medical benefits – is no longer taken for granted (Henwood, Shirani, and Coltart, 2010). Changing labor markets and rising inequality have bifurcated populations of young fathers, not only by income, but by social class and across races (Furstenberg, 2011; Murray, 2012).
In countries challenged by extreme economic transitions, men may aspire to be caregivers but are confined by the limitations of their providing roles. Korean and Japanese fathers began to move toward greater involvement as caregivers, supported by government policies, but retrenched into traditional provider roles during recent fiscal crises (Kwon and Roy, 2007; Yamato, 2008). Perhaps the greatest caution to the new father model is from Russian fathers, who often simply reject the new father ideal as too ambitious, too unattainable given the limited economic opportunities afforded to them (Utrata, 2008).
Fatherhood research has become more dynamic with a shift away from a focus on family structure – which coparents are “in” a family? – to family process – what do coparents “do”? Fathers and mothers simultaneously negotiate expectations as partners and as coparents. Men are better able to set aside conflict if they can understand how these two roles – partner and coparent – are different from each other (Hardesty et al., 2008). Fathers and mothers also respond in complex ways to each other’s involvement as coparents. For example, mother involvement is critical for children’s school readiness, but fathers serve mainly as buffers, enhancing school readiness when mothers are uninvolved (Martin, Ryan, and Brooks Gunn, 2010). Both parents perform a complex cluster of responsibilities with children and household duties, but mothers multitask more frequently than fathers. For mothers, this mix of work conflicts more often (Offer and Schneider, 2011) and is often time spent alone, on a tight timetable, and in more physical activities than for fathers (Craig, 2006).
Gender role ideology plays an important part in determining how coparents make decisions on father involvement. Men and women’s educational status and work contexts consistently relate to choices about shares of child care, even when these relationships vary slightly across different countries (Craig and Mullan, 2011). Fathers with higher educational attainment cared more frequently for their children in Denmark and Australia, but not in France and Italy, where these fathers were more traditionally masculine. These ideologies can be passed over generations, from parents to children and particularly adolescents (Davis and Wills, 2010). In some contexts, however, a shared parenting ethos may fade and be framed less as a social duty than as a personal choice (Vuori, 2009). In some cases, personal choice may lead to shared coparenting. Couples who committed to childbirth before marriage showed greater father involvement and more shared coparenting decisions (Hohmann-Marriott, 2011).
In the midst of global economic recession, renegotiation of men’s roles in families occurs at the edge of public and private debates around work and family life. Men tend to spend more time in care for children when mothers work, including more solo time with children, more routine care, and more activities that reflect enhanced responsibility (Raley, Bianchi, and Wang, 2012). However, both mothers and fathers are reluctant to give up time with children. Despite the continuing importance of the provider norm, parental and child development can take priority over career concerns. In Norway, men trim their work hours during their children’s preschool years but extend work hours when they reach school age (Dommermuth and Kitterod, 2009). These concerns may be specific to different social contexts and national policies, however. Biggart and O’Brien (2010) argue that being a father – and not one’s career stage – best predicts longer work hours for men in the United Kingdom.
Much of what we know about fathers has been based on the experience of white, middle- and working-class, married men. In the case of the United States, where couple unions are less stable (Cherlin, 2010) and socioeconomic inequality is greater, public safety net less generous, and incarceration higher, this inattention to lower-class fathers is a serious omission. Low-income fathers are more likely to show complex patterns of family formation and child-rearing that occur outside of marriage, across households, or within contexts of multiple-partner fertility (Furstenberg, 2011). For example, over one-third of children in the United States live apart from their biological fathers, with higher proportions of poor children and children of color (DeBell, 2008).
These social demographic changes are reflected in research on fathers, with most journal articles still concerned with two-parent families but an increasing number focused on men in unmarried, nonresidential, cohabiting, single, or stepfather contexts. The availability of new longitudinal data, particularly from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being project, has transformed the study of men and coparenting in low-income families. This study recruited a cohort of over 4,700 parents of newborns and their children, across hospitals in 20 cities in the United States, with follow-up interviews planned up through childhood to age 15. It focused on nonmarital childbearing, welfare reform, and low-income fathers.
Among fathers in Fragile Families data, half displayed low involvement and a quarter displayed high involvement with children. A key to increasing father involvement was quality relations with mothers and with maternal and paternal kin (Ryan, Kalil, and Ziol-Guest, 2008). Roy and Burton (2007) examined how mothers recruit biological fathers, as well as social fathers (usually nonbiologically related boyfriends or male maternal kin), in search of an ideal model for their children, but are cautious about implications for intimacy and for the safety of their children. Relationship histories of young mothers can be important for understanding dynamics in subsequent partnering relationships. Sheftall et al. (2010) suggest that higher-quality coparenting results from mothers having histories of low attachment avoidance, more trust and less conflict with partners, and strong parenting alliance. Moreover, fathers often respond and adjust their involvement in relation to mothers’ decisions. Low-income nonresidential men are likely to end contact with their children if mothers find new partners (Guzzo, 2009), but not if fathers themselves find new partners.
Although marriage and residence may be transitory for low-income couples, they clearly influence men’s coparenting and children’s well-being. Fragile Families data indicate that married and cohabiting African American fathers report similar levels of father involvement (Perry, Harmon, and Leeper, 2012). Bzostek (2008) confirms that involvement with a social father or a nonresidential biological father has similar effects and that contact with a biological father who lives apart does not diminish the positive effects of social fathers on child well-being. Choi (2010) notes that nonresidential fathering may lead to problems with children’s behavior and cognitive development, not simply through absence of fathers but rather in terms of how that absence shapes the parenting of single mothers.
Over many years, the commitment of low-income parents to raise children by remaining together as coparents may take priority over a commitment to being together in a committed marital relationship (Roy, Buckmiller, and McDowell, 2008). The Fragile Families study suggests that maternal support for father involvement in the first year after birth leads to more father engagement with children at age 3 (Fagan and Palkovitz, 2011). Regardless of the romantic status of these relationships, communication across households and coparenting quality remains a strong predictor of future involvement for nonresidential fathers (Carlson, McLanahan, and Brooks-Gunn, 2008).
Distinct from coparenting support is the perception about support and paternal involvement. If couples do not believe that men’s caregiving is important, they are less likely to marry and more likely to end their union (Hohmann-Marriott, 2009). Men are less likely to perceive support from the mother of their children if they are incarcerated or have a new partner or more than one child or either of the parents has limited education (Bronte-Tinkew and Horowitz, 2010). mothers’ perceptions of support are central to their parenting as well. Their perceived emotional parenting support from fathers influences how stressed they are about parenting (Harmon and Perry, 2011).
Fathers’ social capital extends beyond support of children’s mothers into investment by extended family members. The involvement of younger fathers in particular depends heavily on grandparent support, maternal gatekeeping efforts, and shifting romantic status of coparents, even as it declines and stabilizes in the first few years of children’s lives (Herzog et al., 2007). But support from extended kin is not always beneficial for involvement. Support from paternal kin tends to increase men’s involvement, whereas support from maternal kin may decrease involvement (Perry, 2009).
Research on coparenting after divorce and remarriage, blended families and new partners, and complex family configurations offers new insights into fatherhood. Joint custody, higher socioeconomic status, and better coparenting dynamics also predict more contact and nurturance from fathers over time (Peters and Ehrenberg, 2008). When mothers remarry, stepfather involvement may become more influential for child outcomes than involvement of nonresidential fathers (King, 2006). Fathers may be warmer and yet more controlling than stepfathers (Claxton-Oldfield, Garber, and Gillcrist, 2006), and the unique nature of these relationships may leave room for contributions from stepfathers in alliances between male parents (Marsiglio and Hinojosa, 2007).
Changes in families can also reconfigure expectations of the child support system for fathers to pay support. Fathers are less likely to pay child support if mothers find new partners (Meyer and Cancian, 2012). Almost 20 years after extensive reform, the economic child support system in the United States is more effective in securing contributions from parents in postdivorce relationships. Child support systems have been reconfigured to provide training, enhance communication, and reshape coparenting relationships in challenging family contexts. Formal payments from fathers lead to more contact with children in later years (Nepomnyaschy, 2007).
From 2000 to 2010, child support and visitation increased for never-married-mother families (Huang, 2009). However, for Fragile Families participants, informal and overall support dropped off in the first year of a child support order, and formal support increased only slightly after 3 years (Nepomnyaschy and Garfinkel, 2010). If obligation rates are lowered for disadvantaged fathers, mothers who receive welfare may lose up to 30% of their income, and those who do not receive welfare over 40% of their income (Huang, Mincy, and Garfinkel, 2005). Moreover, if studies do not take into account multiple children of fathers, they overestimate amounts that could be paid by 33–60% (Sinkewicz and Garfinkel, 2009). Ongoing reforms of the child support system emphasize services to enable disadvantaged fathers to work and to pay for their children (Cancian, Meyer, and Han, 2011), which could transform their capacity to provide for children and their relationships with mothers of their children.
For three decades, there have been debates about the similarity, or otherwise, of men and women’s parenting and about the quality versus quantity of father involvement. Lamb et al.’s (1985) three-dimensional definition of father involvement (interaction, accessibility, responsibility) transformed how we think about what fathers do in families. Pleck (2010) draws on this research to redirect researchers primarily to positive engagement, warmth and responsiveness, and control – and secondarily to indirect care and process responsibility, such as scheduling of doctor appointments or transportation. His recommendations echo work on nurturance (Marsiglio and Roy, 2012) and on male caregivers’ discomfort and negotiation of physical presence with female caregivers, with other men, and with children themselves in “estrogen-filled” environments (Doucet, 2006).
In addition to these concepts for measuring involvement, studies of family structure have compared the involvement of resident fathers with the involvement of nonresident fathers. Numerous negative child outcomes are associated with nonresidence, including aggression, antisocial behavior, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem (Carlson, 2006). However, it remains a challenge to pinpoint the processes by which lack of coresidence for fathers and children lead to these outcomes. Hofferth (2007) found that children’s academic successes were related to demographic and economic factors, whereas their problematic internalizing and externalizing behaviors were more closely related to fathers’ residence and family structure.
Research with the Fragile Families study has identified clear predictors of low-income men’s involvement, often linked to child outcomes. If men care for pregnant partners and provide resources and support prenatally, they are more likely to be engaged fathers up to 3 years later (Cabrera, Fagan, and Farrie, 2008). Bronte-Tinkew et al. (2007a, b) also find that prenatal intentions are a vital aspect in predicting involvement for low-income fathers. Men who did not want their partners to carry pregnancies to term were less likely to show paternal warmth to their children. Cabrera et al. (2011) show that the quality of a father’s relationship with his child in fifth grade predicted children’s behavioral problems and peer relationship quality. Residence with children, however, had no long-term links to social development. We often expect gender of children to play a critical role in relationship dynamics. Fathers who marry at a child’s birth live more often with sons than daughters. By the end of the first year, however, no evidence in Fragile Families data relates child gender to living arrangements, time, or financial investment of fathers (Lundberg, McLanahan, and Rose, 2007).
Paternal leave policies are motivated by the belief that even a short period of child care early on will result in bonding that translates into continued involvement as the child grows older. Although fathers who take leave in the United States may give the impression that they are less dedicated to their workplace, other perceptions of these fathers – including recent cohorts of young adults – can be very positive, although it is assumed that these men sacrifice career success by taking leave (Coleman and Franiuk, 2011).
Progressive policies and experiments to promote gender equity in Scandinavian countries have set the tone for a broad public approach to paternal leave. To encourage uptake, the Scandinavian Daddy Leave cannot be transferred to mothers, thus signaling that child care by fathers is acceptable and desirable. This policy, with Sweden at the forefront, has shown that more days of paternal leave result in more child care and more satisfaction with child contact (Haas and Hwang, 2008). Data from Sweden suggests that men who take more paternal leave time even have lower mortality rates and are likely to be more stable, more fit, and healthier (Månsdotter and Lundin, 2010).
In the United States, the lack of a federal parental leave policy has left it up to individual employers. Mechanisms such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) craft flexible and tailored options, if they exist at all (Bocchicchio, 2006). In the United States and the United Kingdom, fathers who take more time on leave tend to be more involved in care of their children (Nepomnyaschy and Waldfogel, 2007). In the United Kingdom, fathers have taken shorter periods of leave (1 week) compared to the United States (longer time by relying on vacation days) (Kaufman, Lyonette, and Crompton, 2010).
The larger question may be how policies can promote men’s caregiving as well as better opportunities for women in the workforce (Perlesz, 2006). Flexible leave policies may only be effective when backed by formal rights and statutory work–life balance measures to allow for change in the division of household labor (Gregory and Milner, 2008). In Canada, fathers’ take up of leave is shaped by mothers’ personal preferences as well as public policies, such as eligibility of mothers for paid leave (McKay and Doucet, 2010). Alternatively, if mothers are afforded paid leave and employment security, as in Australia, fathers may be rendered invisible through state initiatives that neglect to recognize men’s potential contributions as caregivers (Ainsworth and Cutcher, 2008).
As with childhood outcomes, fathers’ residence matters for adolescent health and feeling of closeness (Booth, Scott, and King, 2010). Men’s connection and involvement are negatively related to internalizing and externalizing behaviors of adolescents (Day and Padilla-Walker, 2009). And later in life, if children lived with their fathers during adolescence, chances of being teen fathers or living apart from their own children are diminished (Forste and Jarvis, 2007).
In addition to father effects, we need to consider bidirectional influences and transactional models of child effects. For example, Hawkins, Amato, and King (2007) recognize how adolescent well-being is a primary driver of the involvement of nonresident fathers. Decisions that adolescents make about their own health encourages responses from fathers as well. Adolescent sexual risk taking can promote fathers to seek more information about their children and to create more family activities, in an effort to deter their children’s risky activities (Coley, Votruba-Drzal, and Schindler, 2009).
The long course of father–child relations is defined by unpredictability, particularly when it is marked by separation or divorce among provider fathers (Wallerstein and Lewis, 2008). Children from previously intact and coresidential families have better relationships with their fathers after divorce than children with nonresidential fathers. Men’s relationships with their daughters may be more damaged after divorce than those with sons (Nielsen, 2011). Efforts to repair and maintain communication and closeness may take many years and can influence daughters’ own intimate relationships (Miller, 2010). Sons may weather divorce differently. Kenyon and Koerner (2008) find that maternal disclosure about fathers most directly affects boys with low emotional maturity.
Looking at postdivorce relationships over a 14-year period, Cheadle, Amato, and King (2010) used longitudinal data to find that two-thirds of divorced fathers in the United States have unchanging relationships with their children (either high involvement or complete noninvolvement). In contrast, upward of 23% have declining contact and 8% show increasing contact over time. Just over one-third (36%) of nonresidential fathers never see their children (Huang, 2009). This contemporary snapshot compares favorably with relationships in the 1970s; nonresidential fathers have more frequent contact with their children today, especially if they pay child support or if they were married when their children were born (Amato, Meyers, and Emery, 2009).
We have learned more about how adult children manage relationships with their nonresidential fathers. When children have good relations with their mothers, they are able to stay in contact with their fathers as well, and these relationships grow closer when young adult children get married or have children of their own (Scott et al., 2007). Aquilino’s research (Aquilino, 2006) confirms that fathers’ relations with their young adult children remain strong if they were strong during adolescence. Young adult fathers may seek out close relations with their own fathers to gather support and advice in the struggle with limited job options and the pressure to provide for their children (Roy et al., 2010). However, men whose fathers lived apart from them are more likely to be absent from their own children, and women are more likely than men to have children with partners who are absent (Pougnet et al., 2012). And much later in life, older fathers may receive less social support from family or others in the wake of divorce, widowhood, and remarriage (Kalmijn, 2007).
An emphasis on process and contexts has led to research on fathers’ transitions in involvement with children across the life course. The transition to fatherhood for new parents in general may enhance well-being and lead to more work hours (Knoester, Petts, and Eggebeen, 2007), but new fathers experience this in distinct ways. Complex postpartum partnering dynamics can demand negotiation of marital satisfaction, attitudes about men’s involvement, and commitment to men’s and women’s employment (Lee, 2007). Young fathers may feel conflicted about choices between finding a job, equated with being a good provider and father, and finishing school, which is reflective of being a good parent more generally (Futris, Nielsen, and Olmstead, 2010).
A life course perspective urges us to consider the longer view, that men remain fathers for their entire lives, and the lives of their children. Men change their behavior and perspectives across multiple transitions within fatherhood, and not just to fatherhood (Palkovitz and Palm, 2009). The challenge is capturing such transitions, and longitudinal data and new statistical techniques, such as latent class analyses, may hold the greatest promise to explore transitions in men’s lives over many years (Dariotis et al., 2011).
One of the most salient issues in men’s pursuit of new fatherhood expectations of provision and caregiving are the substantial challenges that most men face in achieving these expectations. With increasing income inequality and larger gaps between those with education and employment and those without, successful new fathers are difficult to find (Smeeding, Garfinkel, & Mincy, 2011). What are some of the key challenges to new fatherhood?
New fatherhood itself reflects a hegemonic masculinity that fits with a global economy and shifting gender roles in families, but it is a version of masculinity that is not appropriate for all fathers. Gay fathers and stay-at-home fathers have crafted different expectations for men, in terms of expressions of care, alternative family values, and even the proper physical location of fathers in homes and in public settings (Doucet, 2006; Goldberg, 2012; Merla, 2008). Low-income African American fathers integrate these mainstream versions of manhood with street versions of manhood that emphasize independence, respect, and risk taking that may run counter to what we associate with “good fathering” (Roy and Dyson, 2010). In effect, the heterogeneity of the population of disadvantaged fathers, in their divergent experiences as parents and partners, contradicts widely held assumptions that all have failed as fathers. Through commitment to fathering that does not fit with mainstream expectations, these men dissemble stereotypes of the nonessential father, the deadbeat dad, and the “player” who runs in fear from commitment or marriage (Tamis-LeMonda and McFadden, 2010).
For many fathers, multiple-partner fertility raises real challenges to father involvement. Such higher-order births are more likely for disadvantaged urban men, men with depression, men with limited educational attainment, and unmarried or minority men (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2009). About one-third of men who have multiple children with multiple partners are involved in nonmarital relationships, and that pattern is increasing. These men also tend to be younger at their first sexual activity or their first birth (Manlove et al., 2008). Fathers with low conflict and high relationship satisfaction stay with current partners for the next child, but men in unstable relationships are more likely to have children with a new partner (Scott et al., 2010). However, multiple-partner fertility is not primarily a problematic father behavior. Mothers in low-income families are more likely to have a second child than unmarried fathers (Guzzo and Hayford, 2010). For mothers or fathers, higher-order births are associated with negative child outcomes across these studies.
Research has begun to demystify how risks of incarceration, substance abuse, or domestic violence can become barriers to low-income fathers’ involvement with children. In the Fragile Families sample, half of all fathers had such a risk, which was negatively associated with men’s involvement with mothers and children, although men’s relationships with mothers often mediated the impact of risks on involvement with children (Waller and Swisher, 2006). Fatherhood also presents low-income men in particular with an opportunity for second chances to rebuild their identities and daily routines around generative behavior, and to turn away from risky behavior (Roy and Lucas, 2006). Social institutions can foster a context in which fathers can recover from risks. School attendance is a protective factor for young fathers who stayed in school. They exhibited lower rates of risky behavior than dropouts or even graduates no longer in school (Weinman et al., 2007). For men who are unemployed and homeless, shelters provide behavioral and psychological boundaries within which fathers can build new parenting roles (Schindler and Coley, 2007).
Correctional facilities prove to be institutional settings that can curtail men’s efforts to be involved with their children. Research on mass incarceration of low-income and men of color has expanded dramatically (see review by Raphael, 2011). Again, among the Fragile Families sample, half of all African American fathers were incarcerated by their child’s fifth birthday (Perry and Bright, 2012). These men fared worse in employment, earning less and working fewer hours in underground and off the books jobs compared with never incarcerated fathers (Lewis, Garfinkel, and Gao, 2007). Incarceration forced men to confront starkly different expectations for being an inmate and being a father (Dyer, Pleck, and McBride, 2012). Fathering while doing prison time could be productive and generative, and men were confident in their commitment to involvement and value of contact with their children (Lee et al., 2012). However, it was often not feasible to meet their expectations upon release. Families facilitated formal and informal networks of support for men (Walker, 2010) who could not easily deliver on their promises of engagement with children during reentry (Yocum and Nath, 2011).
The impacts of paternal incarceration are extensive. Children of incarcerated fathers show increased attention problems and aggressive behavior. Paternal incarceration has even stronger effects than father absence for children (Geller et al., 2012). Moreover, in some European countries, children of offenders are more likely to be convicted themselves (Besemer and Farrington, 2012). At the very least, the process of prisonization can lead African American fathers to practice more restrictive and harsh parenting upon release (Modecki and Wilson, 2009) and can result in high levels of parenting stress (Loper et al., 2009).
Poor working conditions and lower social class have subtle associations with the quality of fathers’ parenting. In the United States, fathers who reported less supportive work environments, more work stress, and nonstandard work schedules (as well as fewer work hours) also provided poor linguistic stimulation and relatively negative effect in interaction with their children (Goodman et al., 2011). Further, fathers in workplaces with low self-direction and high stress – likely to be working-class jobs – showed less engaged and sensitive parenting (Goodman et al., 2008). These contexts may also be associated with depression, marital conflict, role overload, and low levels of intimacy with children (Ransford, Crouter, and McHale, 2008).
Stress and conflict over work and family life decisions play out differently in distinct contexts. For example, mothers in dual-earner families may appreciate fathers’ contributions more, as they were less likely to undermine fathers’ play and caregiving than in single-earner families. Perhaps mothers appreciate men’s contributions as active new fathers (Buckley and Schoppe Sullivan, 2010). Race factors – as evident in structural inequalities and possibly differences in values – also shape men’s work or care options. White men worked more when they became fathers, but those with traditional values were twice as likely to work more when they became fathers, compared with white men with egalitarian attitudes. In contrast, black men – regardless of traditional or egalitarian attitudes – did not work more hours when they became fathers (Glauber and Gosjolko, 2011).
Schindler (2010) found that men’s parenting engagement and financial contributions were positively related to their psychological well-being – but such well-being did not necessarily lead fathers into engagement and financial contribution. As in the case of mothers, fathers’ depression appears to have strong impacts on children and on parental involvement. Depression among nonresidential fathers often results in low levels of father involvement (Paulson, Dauber, and Leiferman, 2011). Kane and Garber (2009) suggest that father depression leads to children’s externalizing behavior, although this may depend on levels of conflict in father–child relationships.
Significant focus has been dedicated to the effects of depression, which is likely the most common mental health problem for fathers. Depression is shaped not only by education and age but by race, marital status, employment, drug use, and incarceration history. It is related to parenting stress, and it decreases engagement with children, relationship quality with partners, and coparenting support (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2007). Low-income African American men have a much higher rate of depression than men in the general population (Sinkewicz and Lee, 2011). One possible strategy to ameliorate depression for these men may be more active engagement with sons, including monitoring their safety and teaching them how to survive as young black men in America, which increase personal mastery (Caldwell et al., 2011). Fathering programs may also be a site in which to offer mental health interventions for depression, alongside parenting and employment services (Fitzgerald et al., 2012).
In the broader context of health challenges for men, Fragile Families data confirms that unmarried fathers’ health does improve upon marriage due to benefits from mothers’ health insurance (Haldane, Mincy, and Miller, 2010). With the advent of affordable health care in the United States, disadvantaged fathers are likely to see better health outcomes. Improved children’s health may impact outcomes for fathers as well, because poor child health decreases employment for fathers, especially for cohabiting low-income fathers (Noonan, Reichman, and Corman, 2005).
The process of immigration to the United States presents a stressful and crucial transition for family relationships, as many families are divided and reunited across time and place (Strier and Roer-Strier, 2010). Immigration continues to present substantial challenges to the involvement of even highly committed fathers (see Behnke, Taylor, and Parra-Cardona, 2008, for discussion of Mexican fathers). Some families carry more traditional values and beliefs and utilize them effectively in these dramatic shifts in residence and culture.
However, immigrant families have undergone important shifts in expectations for men’s parenting and in consequences of men’s involvement with children (Chuang and Moreno, 2008). Some recent immigrant parents shift child-rearing techniques to permit youth more choice and power, but they make sure to retain positions of authority and discipline (Nesteruk and Marks, 2011). Mothers have greater knowledge of children’s daily routines than fathers, and the parent/adolescent relationship and youth adjustment is shaped by their parents’ division of paid labor (Updegraff, Delgado, and Wheeler, 2009). If mothers and fathers both work, conflictual negotiation of work/family responsibilities is more likely to spill over and bring stress into relationships with children.
Some fathers leave their children behind in a home country when they seek better jobs and more income elsewhere. Mexican children may interact more frequently with fathers who have migrated than with those who divorced; this may be an outgrowth of men’s remittances and investment in their children’s schooling (Nobles, 2011). However, children left behind may themselves feel that their families are incomplete (Thomas, 2010) and may suffer from a higher chance of illness (Schmeer, 2009). Latino adolescents in particular struggle with the impact of fathers who do not reside with them. Lopez and Corona (2012) present qualitative evidence of high-risk adolescents’ anger, longing, and indifference as they navigate early childhood memories and mothers’ interpretations of fathers’ reduced involvement.
The long arm of immigrant men’s jobs shapes family relationships and circumstances. Crouter et al. (2006) found that Mexican fathers’ income in the United States was negatively associated with depression among highly acculturated families – but it did not buffer depression among less acculturated families. Likewise, racism at men’s place of employment was associated with depression in these less acculturated families, but not in families that were more acculturated. Other aspects of immigrant incorporation have complex and sometimes contradictory results. For example, citizenship in the United States is negatively associated with warmth for Chinese fathers, yet the use of English language skills is positively associated with physical care and nurturing for Mexican fathers (Capps, Bronte-Tinkew, and Horowitz, 2010).
In this chapter, I took an explicitly multidisciplinary approach to capture a wide range of recent research on fathering and fatherhood. As we study more about how fathers play a critical role in contemporary family life, we must situate these insights within dramatic demographic, policy, economic, and social changes that run throughout a globalized community. I suggest that fatherhood – especially in the past decade – has been indelibly marked by a diversification of fathering experiences and perspectives, as well as an emergent inequality that goes beyond differences in income.
Future research on fathers should be attuned to the forces of diversity and inequality as they remake the context in which men care and provide for their children. And on a more individual level, how do families and fathers themselves reframe, reequip, and reposition men as fathers who face numerous challenges, particularly as they strive to become new fathers who both care and provide for their children? Studies cited in this chapter suggest that innovative methodological designs and insightful, original concepts will help to push our understanding of men’s parenting forward in coming years. In this way, it may be that we are witnessing “the end of men” in a traditional sense – as well as acknowledging the beginning of contemporary fatherhood, as a broad, diverse, and full range of expressions and behaviors for men with varying resources and from divergent life experiences.