to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Fam-
ily Statistics. Hence the literature on ‘‘absent’’ fathers
has focused mainly on the physically absent (i.e., non-
resident father), rather than on the psychologically
absent father. This body of research characterizes the
father’s role as unidimensional—either physically
present or not. When one accounts for the distinction
between physical versus psychological absence, both
the patterns of involvement and the consequences of
physical absence are less straightforward. For exam-
ple, there are little data on the variation of father in-
volvement in intact families. It is also not clear how
‘‘absent’’ men have been from their families. In 1999
Lerman and Sorensen reported that two-thirds of fa-
thers of children born out of wedlock had a substan-
tial amount of contact with at least one nonmarital
child. There is also little understanding of the nonfi-
nancial ways that some fathers—especially nonresi-
dential fathers—contribute to their families. Green
and Moore reported in 2000 that nonresident low-
income fathers often provided financial support in-
formally, rather than through the formal child sup-
port enforcement system. Fathers may prefer these
less formal systems, because they feel they have more
control over how money for the child is spent.
Nevertheless, research consistently shows that
children growing up without their father face more
difficulties—even when studies control for family in-
come—and are at risk for low school achievement,
low involvement in the labor force, early childbear-
ing, and delinquency. Boys growing up without fa-
thers seem especially prone to exhibit problems in
the areas of sex-role and gender-identity develop-
ment, school performance, psychosocial adjustment,
and control of aggression. Girls are affected by father-
absence too, although the effects on girls may be less
enduring, dramatic, and consistent than the effects
on boys. Holding race, income, parent’s education,
and urban residence constant, Harper and McLana-
han in 1998 found that boys with nonresident fathers
had double the odds of being incarcerated; boys who
grew up with a stepfather in the home were at an even
higher risk of incarceration, roughly three times that
of children who remained with both their natural par-
ents.
Fathers’ emotional investment in, attachment to,
and provision of resources for their children are asso-
ciated with the well-being, cognitive development,
and social competence of young children even after
the effects of such potentially significant confounds as
family income, neonatal health, maternal involve-
ment, and paternal age are taken into account. Fa-
thers play an important role in their children’s
socialization and there are many ways in which fathers
influence their children’s relationships with peers. In
a 2001 publication, Ross and colleagues proposed
three different paths that lead to variations in chil-
dren’s peer relationships. These paths include lessons
learned in the context of the father-child relation-
ship, fathers’ direct advice concerning peer relation-
ships, and fathers’ regulation of access to peers and
peer-related activity.
In addition, fathers have been found to be impor-
tant players in the development of children’s emo-
tional regulation and control. During middle
childhood, paternal involvement in children’s school-
ing in both single-father and two-parent families is as-
sociated with greater academic achievement and
enjoyment of school by children. For both resident
and nonresident fathers, active participation in their
children’s lives, rather than simply the amount of
contact, appears to be formatively important. In ado-
lescence too, stronger and closer attachments to resi-
dent biological fathers or stepfathers are associated
with more desirable educational, behavioral, and
emotional outcomes. High involvement and closeness
between fathers and adolescents, rather than tempo-
ral involvement per se, protect adolescents from en-
gaging in delinquent behavior and experiencing
emotional distress. Thus, both quantity and quality of
father involvement combined into the concept of
‘‘positive paternal involvement’’ result in positive
child outcomes.Antecedents of Father Involvement
There is an emerging body of research on the fac-
tors that predict positive father involvement. Father
involvement is likely affected by multiple interacting
systems operating over the life course, including a fa-
ther’s mental health, expectations, family relations,
support networks, community and culture, the child’s
own characteristics, and even public policies.
Paternal depression and aspects of personality
have been found to predict the quality of father-infant
attachment and interaction. Parenting stress has also
been found to be negatively associated with security
of father-child relationships, quality of father-infant
interactions at four months of age, and father nurtu-
rance toward an ill infant.
Related to expectations is the notion of intended-
ness, that is, the extent to which a father intended or
welcomed the birth of his child. There is some evi-
dence that a father’s positive parenting may be
strongly associated with whether the pregnancy was
intended. Unwanted and mistimed childbearing has
been linked to negative children’s self-esteem.
Mother-father relationships are very important.
A father who has a positive relationship with the
mother of his child is likely to be more involved in his150 FATHERS