Browsing by Subject "Father involvement"
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Item Middle class fathers' involvement in their child's education(2011-08) Van Bolhuis, Iektje D.; Carlson, Cindy I., 1949-; Cawthon, Stephanie; Dodd, Barbara; Garcia, Shernaz B.; Rochlen, AaronParent involvement in education (PI) is widely documented to benefit children’s educational outcomes. PI is a multidimensional construct that takes many different forms. This study considered three dimensions of PI: Home-Based Involvement, School-Based Involvement, and Home-School Communication. Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler have created a theoretical model that seeks to explain what motivates parents to engage in PI and the mechanisms by which PI benefits children’s educational outcomes. However, research studies that have used Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s model used samples that consisted primarily of mothers with fathers typically representing less than 10% of the sample. Father involvement in education has been shown to benefit children’s educational outcomes over and above the involvement of mothers. However, there is little known about the PI practices in which fathers engage, or what motivates fathers to engage in PI. Using Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s model, this study aimed to investigate fathers’ PI practices, as well as the variables that motivate fathers to engage in PI. An online survey was conducted and 185 fathers completed the survey in full. Results of the survey suggest that fathers engaged most often in Home-Based Involvement, less in Home-School Communication, and least often in School-Based Involvement practices. Fathers’ belief that it is their role to engage in PI (role construction) and requests from the child to engage in PI consistently explained all three types of PI. Other variables that significantly explained Home-Based Involvement included the father’s biological relationship with the child, and whether the father lived with the child’s mother. School-Based Involvement was significantly explained by father’s perceptions of available time and energy and their biological relationship to the child. The ultimate purpose of this study was to provide educators with information they can use to successfully increase fathers’ PI practices for students at their schools.Item Predicting low-income fathers' involvement and the effect of state-level public policies on fathers' involvement with their young children(2008-12) Mikelson, Kelly S.; Hummer, Robert A.; Stolp, ChandlerThis dissertation examines low-income fathers’ involvement with their young children using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) data. Chapter 3 entitled, “He Said, She Said: Comparing Father and Mother Reports of Father Involvement,” compares mother and father reports of fathers’ frequency of involvement in various activities and in measures of emotional involvement. This chapter finds that fathers report spending 17.6 percent more time engaged in 11 activities with their young children than mothers report the father spending. How parental disagreement is measured yields starkly different results given the underlying distribution of these data. Chapter 4 entitled, “Estimating the Impact of Child Support and Welfare Policies on Fathers’ Involvement,” is a longitudinal analysis combining three waves of the FFCW data with annual, state-level policy data on child support enforcement and welfare policies. This chapter examines the impact of policies on fathers’ involvement over time. Fathers’ involvement is operationalized as accessibility, responsibility, and engagement. Using parents that are unmarried at the time of the focal child’s birth, this chapter finds that public policies do influence fathers’ involvement after controlling for individual social and demographic characteristics. Policies may be operating in conflicting ways to both increase and decrease fathers’ involvement. For example, fathers’ daily engagement is positively affected by stronger paternity establishment policies but is negatively affected by stronger child support enforcement collection rates and the welfare family cap policy. Chapter 5 entitled, “Two Dads Are Better Than One: Biological and Social Father Involvement,” examines whether biological and social fathers are substitutes or complements in a child’s life and how biological fathers and social fathers impact the mother’s frequency of involvement. This chapter finds that resident social fathers contribute as much time to the focal child as resident biological fathers. Factors that increase the overall parental frequency of involvement include having: a resident biological or social father, native-born parents, a biological father who had a very involved father, and a positive relationship between the biological parents. Factors that decrease overall parental frequency of involvement include: the father’s new partner, the father’s incarceration, a mother’s other children, and the child’s increasing age.