This study focuses on relations between fathers' behavior in family context and children's adjustment, including the roles of paternal depressive symptoms, paternal marital conflict behaviors, paternal parenting, and children's emotional security. Participants included 235 families with a six year old child, with families followed longitudinally each year for three years. In terms of fathers' adjustment, paternal problem drinking was related to paternal negative marital conflict behaviors and decreased positive parenting, which was associated with children's externalizing and internalizing problems. Fathers' depressive symptoms were directly related with children's internalizing problems. Children's emotional security was an intervening variable in relations between father's behavior in family context and children's development.Past research has often neglected the influences of fathers on children's development within multiple family contexts. It remains that fathers are under-represented in studies of child development and are rarely a distinct focus of study (Phares, Field, Kamboukos, & Lopez, 2005). Consequently, understanding the role of fathers as socialization agents in the development of their children, especially in the context of longitudinal model testing, has been neglected. Although support is growing for the proposition that fathers influence children as a function of multiple family processes, fathers are still seldom a focus of systematic study involving simultaneous consideration of several possible pathways (Phares, Lopez, Fields, Kamboukos, & Duhig, 2005). The present study contributes uniquely by focusing on relations between fathers in marital and family context and their children's development.Based on the developmental psychopathology perspective (Cohen & Cicchetti, 2006), Cummings, Goeke-Morey and Raymond (2004) outlined a framework for examining multiple pathways of influence by fathers in the context of marital and family functioning. This framework provides bases for conceptualizing how fathers influence children's adjustment over time, including psychological functioning, marital conflict behaviors, and parenting.
Publisher's Disclaimer:The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/journals/fam. These pathways include children's coping processes, focusing on children's emotional security, as an intervening and explanatory variable for developmental pathways. Each of the pathways emphasized in the fathering framework are potentially influential in the development of children, but have seldom been examined in a c...
