Changes in fathering over the last decades have led to substantially more involvement of fathers in their children's upbringing. At the same time, high rates of parental separation and subsequent loss of contact fuel concern about separated fathers' role in their children's lives. Underlying such concern is the assumption that separation represents a discontinuity in fathers' parenting. This paper investigates whether fathers' pre-and post-separation paternal involvement is linked: are fathers with lower levels of contact after separation those who were less involved fathers when co-resident? To answer this question, we draw on a nationally representative UK longitudinal study of children born in 2000-2001 to interrogate the links between fathering before and after separation for 2107 fathers, who separated from their child's mother before the child was age 11. We show that fathers who were more involved parents prior to separation tend to have more frequent contact after separation, adjusting for other paternal and family characteristics. The size of this association between pre-and post-separation fathering is, however, modest, and even among more involved fathers, intensity of contact declines over time.
The 2008 welfare reform introduced by the previous Labour government requires (most) lone parents with older children to be available for work. This article examines the potential effect of this reform on the employment rate of lone parents and whether the age of the youngest child is a good indicator of ‘ability to work’. It suggests that reform will not lead to the desired increase as the target group is too small and the levels of multiple disadvantages within the group too high. ‘Ability to work’ needs to be conceptualised more broadly if it is to mean ‘ability to get a job’.
BACKGROUNDIn recent decades there has been growing interest in the concept of intensive parenting. However, the literature is mostly qualitative and based on Anglo-Saxon countries. This raises the question of how best to operationalise the concept in a wider cross-national setting.
OBJECTIVEThis paper aims to operationalise the theoretical concept of intensive parenting in a crossnational perspective.
METHODSThe data for this study come from the CROss-National Online Survey panel [CRONOS], conducted in Estonia, Great Britain, and Slovenia in 2017. The analysis is based on 18 items on norms related to raising children. Exploratory factor analyses were carried out to identify dimensions of intensive parenting. Variation by respondents' sociodemographics for the different dimensions was also analysed.
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