Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2014, Marriage and Family Counseling/Therapy

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influences of the created constructs of father involvement, family structure (marital status), parental relationship quality, and paternal religiosity on young adult-father relationship quality. Data from all three waves of the National Survey of Families and Households were used to test the present study's hypotheses. Canonical correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between the eight independent variables (four from each of the first two waves) and the two dependent variables of interest (both from the third wave). Within the framework of Systems Theory, it was hypothesized that each of the constructs of father involvement, family structure, parental relationship quality, and paternal religiosity would be statistically significant predictors of the constructs of young adult-father relationship quality per parental and young adult reports, to varying degrees. All of the created constructs had acceptable or strong internal reliability. Potential contributions of the present study include a better understanding of the relationship of certain family structure and father involvement factors on children's relationships with their fathers in young adulthood, as well as on their overall development. Such understanding could aid clinicians, researchers, parents and educators in better understanding the role of these family structure variables on young adult-father relationship quality.

Committee: Karin Jordan Dr. (Advisor); Xin Liang Dr. (Committee Member); Cynthia Reynolds Dr. (Committee Member); Rebecca Boyle Dr. (Committee Member); Rikki Patton Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Counseling Education; Families and Family Life; Individual and Family Studies; Mental Health; Personal Relationships; Religion; Therapy

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Sociology

For a long time, research on parenting had focused solely on motherhood and its effects on family outcomes and positive child development. However, in recent years, fathers' role in family well-being has been recognized among scholars from various disciplines, such as demography, psychology, family studies, social work, and criminology. Becoming a parent is a major life transition, and how parents adapt to their new role is influenced by various factors. For fathers, these factors include the relationship with the child's mother, their family background, and how they are positioned within their social contexts. Yet having a history of antisocial behavior may hamper the ability of fathers to parent their children in entirely positive ways. Using Wave 6 of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), I examine the association between fathers' antisocial behavior and their involvement with their children, and the role of social support in facilitating father-child relationships. I also situate this study in a life course framework and examine whether the timing of fatherhood is a key factor that affects father-child relationships. This study contributes to criminology and family sociology by exploring the complex relationship between antisocial behavior, social support, and father involvement with their children.

Committee: Danielle Kuhl Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Monica Longmore Ph.D. (Committee Member); Wendy Manning Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Human Ecology: Human Development and Family Science

Successful navigation of the transition to formal schooling in early childhood, and other domains across the life span, requires strong self-regulation skills to manage behavior, effectively learn in an elementary school environment, and develop positive relationships with peers. Scholars agree that young children's self-regulation skills are largely shaped by the quality of relational experiences during the first several years of life (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). However, little prior research has taken a family systems perspective and considered the role of fathers' parenting and supportive coparenting behavior, or the extent to which parenting partners take a team-oriented, collaborative approach (Feinberg, 2003), in the development of children's emerging self-regulation skills. Fathers' parenting is associated with positive child social and emotional adjustment, even when accounting for the mother-child relationship (Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2008). Furthermore, both fathers' quality and quantity of parenting (i.e., time spent in childrearing and child-related activities) following the birth of their child often sets the stage for future patterns of involvement (Doherty, Erickson, & LaRossa, 2006). Although research has generally indicated that father involvement in childrearing has increased substantially in recent decades (Lamb, 2010), few studies have considered predictors of fathers' parenting quality, defined as positive parenting behaviors such as sensitivity, engagement, and positive affect, or the consequences of fathers' high-quality parenting and quantity of involvement for the development of children's self-regulation. The overarching aim of the collection of studies presented in this dissertation was to examine predictors of fathers' parenting during the infancy-toddlerhood period, and to evaluate the consequences of fathers' parenting for the development of children's self-regulation. Additionally, the larger context in w (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan (Committee Chair); Feng Xin (Committee Member); Purtell Kelly (Committee Member); Wong Jen (Committee Member) Subjects: Developmental Psychology; Families and Family Life; Social Research

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2016, Antioch Santa Barbara: Clinical Psychology

Children in America are being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at rates that are much greater than in previous decades. There is an abundance of research that is being conducted to try and discover the cause of this neurodevelopmental disorder and the interventions that are useful in treating it. It is classified as a spectrum disorder because there is such a large range of severity levels. Similarly, there is a large range of involvement levels by fathers of children with autism. Much research has been done on maternal experiences, leaving a lack of knowledge regarding fathers and how and why they may or may not be involved in the life of their child with autism. This qualitative, phenomenological study sought to understand the lived experience of a father with a child who has autism and how coping skills, parenting styles, and cultural backgrounds may impact how much time a father chooses to be involved with that child. The data was collected through an interview process, The Brief COPE Inventory, and The Parental Authority Questionnaire-Revised. As a result of the analysis of this data, themes emerged; active coping styles and authoritative/flexible parenting styles seemed to allow for a father to be more actively involved in their child's daily life. In addition, cultural backgrounds may or may not effect involvement levels, but they do likely impact how a father perceives Autism Spectrum Disorder and the symptoms that accompany it. The results of this study contribute the current research in the field of autism and how fathers can be assisted in being involved more in the lives and intervention processes of their children with autism. The electronic version of the dissertation is accessible at the Ohiolink ETD center http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd.

Committee: Salvador Treviño Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Denise Mock Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sarah De Los Santos Psy.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Families and Family Life; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Human Development and Family Science

Father involvement is a critical aspect of family life with implications for child and parental physical and socioemotional health, couple relationship quality, and union stability. Yet, father involvement has been almost exclusively investigated in married families, most often via maternal-reports that underestimate involvement and with unidimensional or global measures of father involvement despite evidence that suggests father involvement is multidimensional. Pathways to family formation in the U.S. are increasingly diverse; over 40% of births now occur to unmarried women, at least 60% of whom are cohabiting with their child's father, and approximately 40% of whom will remain in a longer-term cohabitation (more than one year). Hence, there is a significant need for research on father involvement among diverse families. This project advances scholarship on father involvement by empirically testing the most recent multidimensional conceptualization of father involvement among married and continuously cohabiting families during a critical period in the life course: the transition to parenthood. Further, this project bridges the sociological and psychological literatures on married and unmarried father involvement by utilizing multimethod and multidimensional measures of father involvement from two key data sources. The New Parents Project is a short-term, longitudinal study of a community sample of first-time, dual-earner parents that includes paternal self-report questionnaires, videotaped observations, and time-diary data that were exploited to test Pleck's (2010) conceptualization of father involvement for married fathers. The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a nationally-representative sample of births to married and unmarried parents in large U.S. cities provides self-reports of involvement from unmarried fathers, a group historically absent in research on father involvement (Coley, 2001), and was used to test Pleck's conceptualization of fa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Claire Kamp Dush PhD (Advisor); Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan PhD (Advisor); Anastasia Snyder PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Behaviorial Sciences; Demography; Families and Family Life; Individual and Family Studies; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2015, American Culture Studies

The current project examined the meanings of father involvement among black West Indian immigrant males and females (19-81 years old) who are lawful/legal permanent residents living in the United States (U.S.). Subsequent investigations explored the role race/ethnicity and migration played in producing and reproducing cultural meanings and understandings of father involvement, as an aspect of the immigrants' identity creation. The issues of father involvement, especially among black migrant West Indians are important because work on Caribbean migration is feminized. Next, knowledge of black West Indian immigrant fathers and how they father in this new cultural space is not given much interest since all black fathers in the U.S. are seemingly placed into a preconceived racial category which carries very strong negative connotations. Lastly, black white dichotomization characterizes race relation in the U.S., but fails to take into consideration that blacks across the Diaspora are themselves a diverse group of people and as such, ethnic differences (West Indian immigrants and African Americans) and not across groups differences (black, white) need to be assessed. Using racialogy and racial consciousness frameworks from Omi and Winant, and Roediger, I utilized survey responses and in-depth interviews from a diverse socio-economic group of West Indian immigrants at various sites across the U.S. to assess the issues of father involvement. I found that black West Indian migrants in the U.S. defined father involvement in holistic terms; financial provider, friend, educational instructor, life coach, and so on. The role of fathering was not limited to just childhood but continues until the father or child passed away. Father involvement was not confined to a household and is understood as a community behavior. Migration and racial self-perception have profound effects on male immigrants' perceptions of fathering and plays an i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vibha Bhalla (Advisor); Apollos Nwawa (Other); Ellen Berry (Committee Member); Radhika Gajjala (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Black Studies; Caribbean Studies

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2011, Human Ecology: Human Development and Family Science

This study examined child-related time use in a sample of 182 dual-earner, first-time parents in a large, Midwestern city. Parental time use was explored in four involvement domains: positive engagement, responsibility, accessibility, and a sub-domain of routine childcare. At child age 3 and 9 months, time diaries from the participant's workday and non-workday were compared. Results indicated that while fathers were very involved with their children especially in the domain of positive engagement, the greatest discrepancies in parental time use were seen in the domain of routine childcare. This pattern of results remained consistent when breastfeeding and breast pumping were excluded from the routine childcare domain. Explanations and suggestions for future research utilizing time diaries follow.

Committee: Claire Kamp Dush PhD (Advisor); Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Families and Family Life

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Human Development and Family Science

The purpose of the present study was to explore the social support received by adolescent/young fathers and its influence on their involvement with their children. A convenience sample of 40 (15 resident and 25 nonresident) adolescent fathers identified and recruited through a school-based program for pregnant and parenting teens provided data for the current study. Father involvement was measured in terms of frequency of contact during the past month, regularity of financial and other support provided during the last six months, and frequency of father involvement in various nurturing, caregiving, and providing activities with their child during that past month. Social support also was measured in terms of how often fathers went to others for assistance with their child, how much emotional, financial, and childcare support they received from others, and fathers' perceptions of the helpfulness of the support. Adolescent fathers had frequent contact with their children and were more involved in nurturing activities than in caregiving and providing activities. Fathers were most likely to go to their child's mother and their own mother for support. They received the most emotional, financial, and childcare support from the women within their microsystem (their child's mother, their child's maternal grandmother, and their own mother) and this support was related to how involved they were as fathers. Also, the amount of support received was more important than how helpful fathers perceived that support to be in influencing their involvement with their child. Recommendations for future research and implications for family life education are presented.

Committee: Jerelyn Schultz (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2012, Psychology

Latinos are a sizeable and growing population within the United States. Despite this, the majority of empirical research on parenting and father involvement has been conducted with White, middle-class, European American families, the results of which cannot be generalized to Latinos. The primary aim of the current study was to examine how acculturation, gender attitudes, and parenting style influence father involvement in Latino families. Although fathers may have a choice in their level of involvement in the everyday lives of their children, mothers also exert influence on father involvement by conscious or unconscious encouragement or discouragement. Data were collected and independently analyzed from both Latino fathers (n = 90) and Latina mothers (n = 112) in the Midwest. Participants were asked to independently self-report on acculturation, gender attitudes, parenting style, and father involvement. It was hypothesized that acculturation to the U.S. majority culture, egalitarian gender attitudes and an authoritarian parenting style would predict increased father involvement for fathers. This hypothesis was partially supported with parenting style predicting father involvement. Acculturation to the U.S. majority culture, egalitarian gender attitudes, and a permissive parenting style by mothers was hypothesized to predict increased father involvement. This hypothesis was not supported. However, results suggest that both fathers' and mothers' acculturation to the dominant U.S. majority culture may be indirectly related to father involvement. Additional research is needed to explore this potential indirect relationship. A secondary aim of this study was an exploratory examination of the relationship between gender attitudes and parenting style within this population. For both fathers and mothers, an authoritative parenting style predicted gender attitudes. Implications and applications of the results of this study are discussed for practitioners working directly wit (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Paul D. Flaspohler PhD (Committee Chair); Vaishali Raval PhD (Committee Member); Saul Rivera PhD (Committee Member); Robert Burke PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Sociology

I use the Fragile Families data to examine how a diverse group of men can be classified into multiple forms of masculinity. I identify three ideal categorizations of masculinity: the traditional, contemporary, and hyper-masculine models. Cluster analysis results confirm that these categories differentiate forms of masculinity among fathers to create three distinct categories of masculinity. I find a contemporary masculinity category that displays the most socio-economic advantages and "positive" qualities of masculinity. Contemporary masculinity is characteristic of fathers who are egalitarian, emotionally available to the baby's mother, more likely to be married and educated, and the least likely to have ever been incarcerated. Alternatively, the hyper-masculine fathers have the most abusive behaviors, least emotional availability, and are the least likely to be married and educated, while being the most likely to have ever been incarcerated. The last group of fathers is the traditionally masculine fathers who essentially fall in between the contemporary and hyper-masculine fathers. My final two research questions examine if masculinities influence men's intimate and fathering relationships. Using multinomial regression models, I address if masculinity predicts whether fathers transition into a more or less committed relationship with their child's mother between the birth of the child and the child's fifth birthday. I find that intimate relationships, do indeed, differ by forms of masculinity. Contemporary fathers are the most likely and hyper-masculine fathers are the least likely to be continuously married. Hyper-masculine fathers are much more likely to transition into a less committed relationship than to either remain in the same type of relationship or transition into a more committed relationship. Lastly, I use OLS regression models to address whether forms of masculinity are related to father involvement, specifically distinguishing the amount of time fath (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Laura Sanchez PhD (Advisor); Catherine Kenney PhD (Committee Member); I-Fen Lin PhD (Committee Member); Raymond Swisher PhD (Committee Member); Jean Gerard PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Sociology

There have been studies that have linked family structure as a whole to the intergenerational transmission of marriage behavior (Manning et al., 2007; McLanahan and Booth, 1989). Some studies (Booth, Brinkerhoff and White, 1984; Greenberg and Nay, 1982; Jennings et al., 1992; Jones and Nelson, 1996; Wallerstein and Kelly, 1974) have incorporated crude measures of family structure, such as whether or not parents are divorced, to explain adolescent marital attitudes. Research has not taken into account how parent-child relationships act as channels for the intergenerational transmission of marriage behaviors. Additionally, researchers know less about how fathers in various family structures either hamper or promote children's attitudes towards marriage through the parent-child relationship. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how father involvement, in differing family structures, impacts children's marital expectations. The social learning perspective and parental investment theory serve as the conceptual framework for ensuing analyses by emphasizing how conventional values are passed on from one generation to the next and how biological versus non-biological fathers are prompted to pass core values to their respective children. This thesis specifically examines resident father-child relationships utilizing data from waves 1 and 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (Udry 2003). Overall findings suggest that most adolescents want to get married and think they have a great chance of doing so. Adolescents show increased odds of the importance of expecting to marry across various characteristics including being employed, having favorable attitudes toward marriage and being married. Adolescents who are close to their fathers and are involved in various activities with their fathers (e.g. going to church, going shopping and going to the movies) are more likely to think that it is extremely important to be married someday. But father (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Catherine Kenney PhD (Advisor); Gary Oates PhD (Committee Member); Kara Joyner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Sociology

This research uses Fragile Families data to examine the ways in which father involvement is associated with relationship quality and transitions from cohabitation into either marriage or separation among new parents. It is widely recognized that cohabiting unions are more unstable than marriages and are typically short-lived. With the dramatic increase in cohabiting unions and 19 percent of children being born to cohabiting parents (Child Trends, 2007), understanding the processes through which cohabiting families with children survive or dissolve is vitally important. Research on the processes leading to marriage, or at least stable long-term unions, as well as an examination of the role of father involvement in these processes is needed. My dissertation research includes three central research questions: (1) What is the level of father involvement by union status/transition and do mothers and fathers report similar levels of father involvement?; (2) How are father involvement and coparenting associated with relationship quality among cohabiting and married parents?; (3) How are relationship and parenting characteristics associated with transitions out of cohabitation, through marriage or separation? I find that resident fathers (cohabiting or married) spend the most time with their children, regardless of whether they are continuously resident or become resident over the observation period, and resident parents have the least discrepancy between their reports. Nonresident fathers exhibit the lowest levels of involvement and the highest levels of discrepancy between reporters. Continuously married parents report the highest level of supportiveness from their spouse. There is no difference in supportiveness between continuously married parents and parents who transition from cohabitation to marriage over the observation period. Continuously cohabiting parents report less supportiveness than continuously married parents but are not significantly different from cohabi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Susan L. Brown PhD (Committee Chair); Deborah Wooldridge PhD (Committee Member); Alfred DeMaris PhD (Committee Member); Kara Joyner PhD (Committee Member); Laura Sanchez PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2012, Antioch Santa Barbara: Clinical Psychology

The present study examined the influence that father's residency status and father-child relational qualities have on adolescent psychological adjustment, behavioral outcomes, scholastic achievement, self-identity acculturation, and the subjective well-being of Chinese male immigrants from intact, two-parent households. The relational qualities of interest under investigation consisted of father-son attachment, father involvement, and father acceptance-rejection, from the phenomenological perception of children. A total of 86 participants were included in the overall multivariate analyses - 53 in the father present and 33 in the father absent group, respectively. Results indicate that father attachment positively predicts adolescent psychological adjustment in the father present group, independent of mother-child attachment. However, the importance of peer attachment to psychological health and subjective well-being is also observed. The protective effect that father attachment has against psychological maladjustment or personality disposition development is neutralized after adjusting for peer attachment, but not vice versa. In addition, father acceptance also positively associates with adolescent psychological adjustment, whereas father rejection increases the risks of negative personality dispositions. These findings are preliminary due to the small sample size and an overrepresentation of participants with higher educational background.

Committee: Juliet Rohde-Brown PhD (Committee Chair); Steven Kadin PhD (Committee Member); William Liu PhD (Committee Member); Joe Becher MA (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian American Studies; Asian Studies; Clinical Psychology; Families and Family Life; Mental Health; Personal Relationships; Personality; Psychology; Quantitative Psychology