One-hundred twelve primarily European American and middle-class two-parent families with resident fathers and a 4-year-old child (48% girls) participated in a longitudinal study of associations between coparenting and father involvement. At the initial assessment and one year later, fathers reported on their involvement in play and caregiving activities with the focal child, and coparenting behavior was observed during triadic family interactions. SEM was used to test cross-lagged associations between coparenting behavior and father involvement. Overall, paths from father involvement to coparenting behavior were significant, but paths from coparenting behavior to father involvement were not. Specifically, greater father involvement in play was associated with an increase in supportive and a decrease in undermining coparenting behavior over time. In contrast, greater father involvement in caregiving was associated with a decrease in supportive and an increase in undermining coparenting behavior. Multi-group analysis further showed that these cross-lagged relations did not differ for dual earner families and single (father) earner families, but these relations appeared to differ for families with focal daughters and families with focal sons. These findings highlight the potential for fathering to affect coparenting and the importance of considering the role of contextual factors in coparenting-fathering relations.

Children's socioemotional development is child as well as parent driven. Yet, transactional frameworks are rarely applied to studies of father-child relations. This study examined reciprocal associations between father involvement in play and caregiving and children's adjustment and tested supportive coparenting behavior as a moderator of these associations. One hundred twelve families participated in a 1-year longitudinal study. Fathers reported on their involvement and mothers and teachers reported on preschoolers' behavior at two time points, and supportive coparenting behavior was observed at the second time point. Results showed that father involvement in play predicted relative decreases in externalizing behaviors, and also relative decreases in internalizing behaviors and relative increases in social competence at school only when accompanied by supportive coparenting behavior; reciprocally, fathers showed relative reductions in their play with children initially high in internalizing behaviors perceived by teachers. Father involvement in caregiving predicted relative increases in children's internalizing behaviors, but reciprocal effects indicated that these associations may be driven by children. The presence of reciprocal associations between father involvement and child behaviors that differed for play and caregiving domains and were moderated by supportive coparenting behavior suggests the importance of a transactional, domain-specific, and systemic approach to understanding father-child relations and the implementation of relevant intervention practices.

Self-report data from 112 two-parent families were used to compare levels and predictors of four types of mothers’ and fathers’ engagement with their preschool aged children: socialization, didactic, caregiving, and physical play. Mothers were more involved than fathers in socialization, didactic, and caregiving, whereas fathers were more involved than mothers in physical play. Mothers’ greatest engagement was in caregiving, whereas fathers were about equally engaged in didactic, caregiving, and physical play. Mothers who contributed more to family income were less engaged in socialization and caregiving, whereas fathers with nontraditional beliefs about their roles were more engaged in didactic and caregiving. Children with greater temperamental effortful control received more didactic and physical play engagement from mothers. Fathers were more likely to engage in socialization activities with earlier-born children, whereas mothers were more likely to engage in socialization with girls high in effortful control. Mothers were more likely to engage in physical play with boys and with later-born children.

Trajectories of parental involvement time (engagement and child care) across 3, 6, and 9 months postpartum and associations with parents’ own and their partners’ psychological adjustment (dysphoria, anxiety, and empathic personal distress) were examined using a sample of dual-earner couples experiencing first-time parenthood (N = 182 couples). Using time diary measures that captured intensive parenting moments, hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that patterns of associations between psychological adjustment and parental involvement time depended on the parenting domain, aspect of psychological adjustment, and parent gender. Psychological adjustment difficulties tended to bias the 2-parent system toward a gendered pattern of “mother step in” and “father step out,” as father involvement tended to decrease, and mother involvement either remained unchanged or increased, in response to their own and their partners’ psychological adjustment difficulties. In contrast, few significant effects were found in models using parental involvement to predict psychological adjustment.

This study examined the development of self-regulation during early childhood and the reciprocal relations between self-regulation and maternal sensitivity. Data (N 5 1,364) were drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD).Children's situational and committed compliance were assessed in the laboratory at 24 and 36 months, delay of gratification at 54 months, self-control at 54 months and kindergarten age, and maternal sensitivity was observed at 24, 36, and 54 months. Self-regulation was characterized to progress from situational compliance to committed compliance and then to fully self-motivated regulation. Findings also suggest that the development of self-regulation reflects an ongoing transactional process in which child self-regulation and maternal sensitivity mutually influence each other.