Predictors of Social and Emotional Involvement of Non-Residential Fathers
This working paper is through the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) at Princeton University. With the increased Federal attention toward responsible fatherhood initiatives, this paper uses the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being to predict non-residential fathers' social and emotional involvement with their children. It was hypothesized that child, maternal, paternal, and contextual characteristics would predict father involvement. However, the data show that paternal characteristics and relational factors were the only significant predictors. Significant paternal characteristics include criminal involvement in the past year, number of children in the household and outside of the household, and whether or not he previously lived with the child. Significant relational factors include the mother's report of parental cooperation and relationship quality, the presence of domestic violence, and whether the mother has a new partner.