Father Involvement and Behavior Problems among Preadolescents at Risk of Maltreatment

Abstract

Although there is a well-established connection between father involvement and children’s positive behavioral development in general, this relation has been understudied in more vulnerable and high-risk populations. The aims of this study were to examine how the quantity (i.e., the amount of shared activities) and quality (i.e., perceived quality of the father-child relationship) of father involvement are differently related to internalizing and externalizing behavior problems among preadolescents at risk of maltreatment and test if these associations are moderated by father type and child maltreatment. A secondary data analysis was conducted using data from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). Generalized estimating equations analysis was performed on a sample of 499 preadolescents aged 12 years. The results indicated that higher quality of father involvement was associated with lower levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems whereas greater quantity of father involvement was associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The positive association between the quantity of father involvement and behavior problems was stronger in adolescents who were physically abused by their father. The association between father involvement and behavior problems did not differ by the type of father co-residing in the home. The findings suggest that policies and interventions aimed at improving the quality of fathers’ relationships and involvement with their children may be helpful in reducing behavior problems in adolescents at risk of maltreatment.

The relative contribution of parenting practices in predicting trait emotional intelligence in an Italian adolescent sample

“…These results are in line with previous studies about contextual factors (perceived rearing, parenting styles) that influenced the development of children's personality (Kitamura & Fujihara, ; Maddahi, Javidi, Samadzadeh, & Amini, ). As far as parent‐gender differences are concerned, our results extend those of previous studies, suggesting that paternal involvement has a stronger effect not only on offspring socio‐psychological outcomes (Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, ; Yoon, Bellamy, Kim, & Yoon, ), but also on offspring trait EI. On the contrary, according also to Asghari and Besharat (), autonomy support in mothers seems to be the strongest component in predicting trait EI.…”

Mothers’ Experiences and Challenges Raising a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Qualitative Study

“…Second, this study did not reflect the lived experiences of having a child with autism from a paternal perspective. This is particularly important given that the involvement of fathers has been consistently linked with a significant contribution to their children’s positive development [ 84 ]. Therefore, further studies should focus on the role of the father in caring for a child with autism spectrum disorder to gain insight into the fathers’ perspectives on stress and coping resources [ 85 ].…”

Sexual dream and family relationships in frequent sexual dreamers and healthy volunteers

“…Dreamers scored lower on General Attachment in our study, which agreed with that individuals with insecure interpersonal attachment were likely to report dreams. [ 44 ] Frequent dreamers also had higher Paternal Abuse, which could be explained by that physical abuse by fathers increased adolescents’ level of internalizing behavior problems [ 45 ] and that these problems increased dream recalls. [ 46 ] Moreover, our dreamers scored lower on Maternal Freedom Release, which might be due to that mothers communicated with children more often than fathers about sex and mothers promoted sexual abstinence.…”