Father Involvement and Early Child Development: What We Know and How We Know It

1. Father Involvement and Early Child Development:What We Know and How We Know It University of Pennsylvania Dr. Vivian L. Gadsden, Director, NCOFF William T. Carter Professor of Child Development & Education University of Pennsylvania viviang@gse.upenn.edu For more information, visit:www.ncoff.gse.upenn.edu

3. Contextualizing Early Childhood • The issues of father involvement and the implications for children’s educational achievement are located in larger discussions about parent and family involvement and the value of early childhood educational efforts to engage parents and families and, in turn, to minimize discontinuity between home and school (Fantuzzo, Tighe, & Childs, 1999). • Parents, as a result, come to be seen as a primary link in the microsystem that serves as a protective factor for children in and out of school. • Parents bridge the transition from home to school and support the reciprocity of children’s learning between and across home, school, and community once children enter formal schooling. • Parents’ ability to support their children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development is influenced significantly by their own education and literacy, their past experiences in families and in the world, and their ability to contribute financially. • The issues of race, culture, and class and the ways these intersect with structural barriers and discrimination in society are important in understanding the resources available to parents and whether and how parents are able to take up the responsibilities of parenting. This is particularly true of fathers aiming to support their families.

4. Conteualizing-2 • Research interest in the education of young children has focused primarily on their early development (between birth and five years of age) and has included a broad base of social, emotional, cognitive, and physical competencies that are unlikely to be determined solely through standardized testing. • For early childhood educators who hold this perspective, children’s early development is considered largely in terms of how young children: • think through problems • demonstrate creativity and imagination in play and other activities • interact with other children • develop the cognitive, social, and emotional skills necessary to participate and achieve in a world that they will ultimately shape, both intellectually and morally

5. Contextualizing-3 • Increased attention to the preschool years has spotlighted this period of life as a critical time for developing skills that children need in order to be successful in school. • Three National Research Council reports—Eager to Learn (2001), Neurons to Neighborhoods (2002), and Preventing Early Reading Failure (1998)—each document the significance of early experiences on later development and the effects that these experiences have on school achievement. • The heightened attention to children’s early learning extends from controversial findings related to early childcare (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1999, 2000), to ongoing discussions about early childhood as a field in transition (Meisels & Atkins-Burnett, 2000), to emerging areas of inquiry in early literacy, to greater sensitivity to children’s socio-emotional development. • It is at this early point in a child’s life that fathers can become involved as critical contributors to positive development and better outcomes for their children.

6. Contextualizing-4 • Much of the description of young children and their preparation has been discussed in relation to school readiness, a concept with origins more than 50 years old (Durkin, 1966; Katz, 1999). • Historically and broadly defined, school readiness has referred to the core of knowledge, abilities, and skills that school participation requires and which children are thought to need in order to achieve academically. • New definitions suggest that the field must move beyond cognitive and social development to include children’s physical and emotional health, familial environments, and exposure to community and other environmental risks. • Stipek (2002) points out, however, that the question to be answered is not whether children are ready for school but rather what children are ready to learn and whether schools are ready for children.

7. Contextualizing-5 • Discussions of school readiness both reject and presuppose an equal playing field for children at birth, upon entering school, and in terms of the kinds of schools that they will enter. • Research shows that young children’s social, emotional, and behavioral competencies are linked to subsequent academic performance and that the academic successes or failures are manifest as early as kindergarten and the first grade (Raver & Knitzer, 2002). • For example, Knitzer (2003, p. 1) notes that preschool teachers estimate that “one third to one half of young children are not ‘ready for school’ because they lack the social and emotional skills to follow directions, relate to others, and manage their own impulses and behaviors effectively.” • The National Academy of Sciences has identified three pivotal mechanisms to forge the critical links during early childhood: (1) emotional self-regulation, (2) development of sense of self-efficacy in relation to learning competencies, and (3) social interaction skills with peers and adults (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2002).

8. Contextualizing-6 • On the one hand, many in the field argue that all children should have equal opportunity and access; on the other, what it takes to prepare a child to become school-ready differs for each child – according to: • the severity of hardship and poverty he or she faces • his or her access to stimulating and rich cognitive and social experiences prior to school • the degree to which the child was exposed to high-risk environments • the ability of parents, fathers and mothers, along with other family and community members, to support a child’s development. • Many public and academic scholars argue that for poor children, the urgency in responding to barriers to well-being lies in ensuring their preschool preparation and reducing the intergenerational transfer of poverty and hardship. The magnitude of the barriers is clear. • It is estimated that one-fifth of all children and more than one-third of all African-American and Latino children will be raised in poverty. • A study by Lee and Burkham (2002) shows that kindergartners’ reading and math test scores are directly linked to students’ socioeconomic levels.

9. Sources:United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov3.html Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies, http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/chilpovt.htm SOURCE: Lee, V. E., Economic Policy Institute, Vol. 22, Number 4, p. 10.

10. Considerations: Contextualization of the Issues • These children will attend poor schools and live in neighborhoods with the greatest number of problems and with the fewest resources. • The disparity in opportunity and in the quality of schooling itself suggest that each child does not have equal access to education and that some children are embattled by a range of familial, neighborhood, and school-related problems, such that their talents are barely noticed or used. • As increasing numbers of children become vulnerable to hardship, the issue of how to help them to develop their abilities and discover their strengths to ensure that they are ready for school takes on a special sense of urgency.

11. Considerations: Contextualization of the Issues • Several writers have reminded us that all young children need support—which suggests that they all share strengths and weaknesses. • Families constitute a fundamental social system which promotes, disrupts, or mediates the learning and literacy experiences of its members and in which there are exchanges of knowledge, resources, and services. • Fathers are situated at different locations in the systems that affect their children, depending upon accepted traditions, societal expectations, fathers’ relationships as well as the cultural and social practices within the family. • Through their presence and absence, their involvement or distance, fathers are a critical subset of adults whose interactions with their young children help to frame young children’s views of the importance of learning and questioning their environment, the significance of persistence in schooling, and the value of their own imagination in achieving in school and achieving personal success.

12. The Problem for All Children and Parents: Some Commonly Listed Statistics • In approximately 84 percent of cases where a parent is absent, that parent is the father. • If current trends continue, half of all children born today will live apart from one of their parents, usually their father, at some point before they turn 18. • Where families (whether intact or with a parent absent) are living in poverty, a significant factor is the father’s lack of job skills. • Committed and responsible fathering during a child’s infancy and early childhood contributes to the development of emotional security, curiosity, and math and verbal skills. • An estimated 19,400,000 children (27 percent) live apart from their biological father. • Forty percent of children under age 18 not living with their biological father have not seen their father even once in the last 12 months, according to national survey data.

13. The Good News and the Uncertainties First, the good news: There’s increasing evidence of the significance of father involvement, that is, evidence that there is growing involvement of fathers, particularly young fathers, in children’s early child development. There are multiple studies (more than 100) that point to the significance of father involvement.

14. What We Think We Know • Fathers make contributions to infant/toddler development—on attachment security, emotional regulation, social competence, and cognitive development. • Fathers’ program (Early Head Start and Head Start) involvement has been associated with positive outcomes for children in interventions with older children, suggesting that father program involvement could contribute to earlier outcomes. • There is evidence that fathers are present in the lives of their children more often and at higher levels than previously assumed. They are more likely to be involved in the lives of their children during infancy than any other time. • Programs still vary in how much they involve fathers. A web/mail survey of 261 Early Head Start programs funded from 1995-1999 reported that most programs attempted to involve fathers: • 99% of program representatives surveyed said they included resident biological fathers • 95% included resident nonbiological fathers • 77% reported offering program services to nonresident biological fathers. • In Early Head Start, fathers were rated as more involved, both with their children and with the program, when they were better educated, less depressed, and more likely to use social support (Roggman et al., 2002)

15. What We Think We Know-2 • Findings from studies such as the 1997 work by Nord, Brimhall, and West demonstrated: • That children from two-parent families who are moderately or highly involved in school are significantly more likely to have children who receive mostly high marks, enjoy school, and never repeat a grade • That fathers are less involved than mothers in all types of school activities, including volunteering and attending class events, parent-teacher conferences, and general school meetings • That fathers with less than a high school education were also much less likely to be involved in their child’s school than fathers with higher levels of education • That while nonresidential fathers were found to be substantially less involved in the child’s schools than residential fathers, their involvement was by no means trivial • Some of the problems associated with engaging fathers stem from the unavailability of some fathers who serve as the family’s primary breadwinners; in other cases, fathers live outside of the home and are not considered as important by program staff, are difficult to reach, or are not accessible. • Since many nonresident fathers do not co-reside with children or have antagonistic relationships with the mothers of their children, practitioners are often hesitant to involve fathers or are uncertain of the boundaries of their relationship with families in conflict (Gadsden & Ray, 2002).

16. What Issues Persist? The Uncertainties • We know little about the quality and nature of fathers’ contributions, particularly to emotional regulation and cognitive development. • The data that exist tell us something about the ways that another caring adult (the father) may contribute but less about the role of fathers in effecting positive change for children. • The data do not tell us much about the specific ways in which children’s educational achievement is supported, though there are several studies speaking to the general contributions. What else should we know, and how do we find it? • When positive findings are recorded, the data are inconclusive and outcomes can’t be directly related to fathers. For example, it is not known whether the effects on Early Head Start fathers were due to fathers’ direct involvement in the program or if the effects came through the mothers (Raikes et al., 2006).

17. Framing the Issues of Young Children: Fathers and Families Seven Core Learnings • Fathers care even if that care is not always shown in conventional ways. • Father presence matters in terms of economic well-being, social support, and child development. • Unemployment and Employability: Joblessness is a major impediment to family formation and father involvement. • Systemic Barriers: Existing approaches to public benefits, child support enforcement, and paternity establishment operate to provide obstacles and disincentives to father involvement. • Co-Parenting: A growing number of young fathers and mothers need additional support to develop the skills they will need to share the responsibility for parenting • Role Transitions: The transition from biological father to committed parent has significant developmental implications for young fathers. • Intergenerational Learning: The behaviors of young parents, both fathers and mothers, are influenced significantly by intergenerational beliefs and practices in families of origin.

18. The Core Learnings-2 In 1994, NCOFF created the Fathers and Families Core Learnings that were developed from studies with practitioners in the field.  The Core Learnings offer a framework for identifying, organizing, reviewing research on fathers and families and integrating the interests, issues, and needs of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.  The slides that follow draw on two Core Learnings, Fathers Care and Father Presence Matters, and present sample studies in each that speak to what we are learning as a field about fathers and young children's well-being and learning.

19. Fathers Care. . . . By 1994, that fathers care was documented in a variety of reports and studies (e.g., Achatz and MacAllum, 1994; Bowman, 1990; Lamb, et al., 1982) that were not limited to white, middle-class fathers in two-parent families. Father caring was and is thought to assume many different forms—from emotional commitment to children's development to hands-on support in the home and responsibility for child care. Guiding Research Questions • What are the ways that fathers demonstrate that they care? What are examples of father attachment and support? • What are the personal, familial, and social complexities to fathers caring? To what degree do these complexities revolve around social and developmental needs of young fathers or the problems encountered in making role transitions?

20. Jacinta Bronte-Tinkew, Suzanne Ryan, Jennifer Carrano, and Kristin A. Moore. (2007). Resident fathers’ pregnancy intentions, prenatal behaviors, and links to involvement with infants. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 69, 977-990. • What We Know: A small body of research suggests that men’s pregnancy intentions and prenatal behaviors may have implications for their levels of involvement with children (McLanahan et al., 2001), but few studies have examined how resident men’s intentions and behaviors prior to the birth of a child shape their post-birth fathering behaviors.

21. Bronte-Tinkew et al. • Data source(s) : Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, 9-month resident father surveys (N=6,816) • Cognitive involvement: Fathers were highly involved in some aspects of engagement and not involved in other aspects. The mean of the scale for cognitively stimulating activities (e.g., read, tell stories, and sing) was 3.9, with a range of 0-9, suggesting that the majority of fathers were not highly involved in cognitively stimulating activities with their children. • Physical care (e.g., changing diapers, preparing meals, and feeding children): The mean of the scale was 11.9, with a range from 0-15, suggesting that fathers tend to be quite highly involved in physical care. • Warmth activities (e.g., holding and tickling children): A mean of 9.6 on a scale of 1-10 • Nurturing: (e.g., waking with child when upset, taking the child to the doctor, and staying home with the child when sick): A mean of 8.7, with a range of 0-16 • Caregiving activities: (e.g., bathing the child, walking the child, dressing the child, and taking the child on errands): A mean of 10.3 with a range of 0-20.

22. Gadsden, 1999-2004 • Data source(s): 60 young fathers participating in family literacy/fathering program Theme throughout interviews: Fathers read and wrote for different purposes at home as well as work, and engaged in literacy activities with their children. Many young fathers report engaging continuous periods of time reading to their children, helping them with their homework, and serving as advocates for them with teachers: Well, I read to him, and I don’t know how I would feel if I wasn’t able to read to him or if I wasn’t able to read it well. I have a friend who every time he pick up a book to read to his children, he read the same thing. It’s the same thing. And they know its the same book, but he reads it wrong. • Often, as revealed in the father’s comments, some men have a definite understanding of what skills were essential to becoming a good reader or writer and participated in reading activities with their children. They measure themselves and other fathers against clear standards and, as one father pointed out, realized the problems inherent in “Having a child and never expose them to reading and writing and put them in school and expect them to learn.”

23. Fantuzzo, Gadsden, and McDermott. (2007-2009). Evidence-based Program for the Integration of Curricula • Data sources: Quantitative and qualitative data from children, families, and teachers in 48 Head Start classrooms • 20 classrooms (400 children) were analyzed around “home connections” and family involvement • Surveys regarding level of family involvement • Content analyses of weekly “home connections” assignments, completed by child and one family member, typically mother or father • Classrooms representing demographic variability of students (e.g., home language use, race, and culture) within the school district’s nine geographic regions • Purpose: Improving children’s cognitive and social-emotional development through intentional curricular activities and creating linkages between home and school.

25. Fantuzzo, Gadsden, and McDermott. (2007-2009). Evidence-based Program for the Integration of Curricula • For about 50% of the completed 1000 home connections, fathers’ participation in completing the assignment was indicated by signature, denoting fathers’ involvement in the cognitive tasks. • In documents where children clearly took the lead in completing the task, father presence was denoted through different representations in the completed document (e.g., picture, name, etc.) • The collaboration that took place between parent and child was encouraging, with improvements in the learning behaviors and literacies of black boys most notably. • Data from interviews reveal the need to target specific activities in which fathers and mothers can be involved, that reflect fundamental cognitive and learning behaviors that parents can support, and that are reinforced through thoughtful, systematic information to both parents about the significance of the tasks and the importance for their children. • Literacy and English-language ability were both important factors in determining fathers’ and mothers’ abilities to support their children even when it was clear that they grasped the cognitive and social-emotional tasks.

26. Father Presence Matters Since 1994, research on father presence has increased significantly and has shifted from a focus on absence. Still, the enduring effects of living in a single-parent, female-headed household are unclear, although a variety of negative outcomes for children are associated with father absence (e.g., poor school performance, low self-esteem, early sexual activity, and economic deprivation). Most studies offer little empirical evidence, and what exists is inconsistent in regard to the quality of life for children and their mothers or the long-term effect of single parenting. Guiding Research Questions • What does it matter that a father is in the home — to a child's emotional, social, and cognitive development? From the child's point of view, what difference does it make to live with or have access to one parent only? • How does father absence affect family well-being? For example, how does father absence contribute to poverty in families? What We Know: In 2004, over six million children who resided with a single mother and had a father who lived elsewhere were food insecure (Nord, Andrews, & Carlson, 2005). There a few studies that attempt to identify the mechanisms through which father involvement affects children’s social and emotional well-being.

27. Steven Garasky & Susan D. Stewart, Evidence of the effectiveness of child support and visitation: Examining food insecurity among children with nonresident fathers, Journal of Family Economic Issues, 28, 105-121. • Data source(s): National Survey of America’s Families which provides a range of information on the economic, health, and social characteristics of children, adults, and their families from 44,000 households and 34,439 children, about 10,000 of whom live apart from their biological fathers. • Paying child support is only one way that nonresident fathers can positively affect the well-being of their children. • Among low-income families, children whose fathers are frequent visitors are less likely to experience aspects of food insecurity. • While child support payments have an impact, we have less evidence that receiving child support ameliorates food acquisition problems among low-income children.

28. Brent A. McBride, W. Justin Dyer, Ying Lui, Geoffrey Brown, and Sungjin Hong. (2009). The differential impact of early father and mother involvement on later student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(2), 498-508. • Data source(s): 1st and 2nd wave of the Child Development Supplement data set of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; 390 children age 2-5 at Time 1 and their families • Although early paternal and maternal parenting behaviors were not directly related to later student achievement, differences were revealed in the pattern of relationships between early parenting and later parental school involvement for fathers and mothers. • Early father participation has greater payoffs for student achievement, with later school involvement being found to be negatively related to student achievement.

29. Helen H. Raikes, Jean Ann Summer, Lori Roggman (2005). Father involvement in Early Head Start Programs. Fathering, 3(1), 29-58. • Data source(s): Program reports from 326 Early Head Start programs with children 36 months of age • Almost 50% of fathers were involved in at least one program activity with 26% participating at a higher level (in two or more types of program activities (e.g., parent education programs-17%, group socializations-15%, father only activities-6%, policy councils and program committees, home visits-17% monthly, and dropping children off to the center-24% ever). • Fathers who frequently dropped off their child at the Early Head Start Center were less likely to report a dysfunctional relationship with the child, and more likely to be men of color, to be dropping off a female child, and to be partnered with a working mother or a mother highly in engaged with the program.

30. What the Research Can Tell Us (And What it Has Not) • What we know is that there is considerable variability among children and the different outcomes to apparently similar support: Certain kinds of support appear to work for certain children, fathers, and families but not for others children, fathers, and families. • There is considerable diversity of children’s outcomes in two-parent families as well as diversity in lone-parent families. This should not be provocative or new, given the diversity of children in the same families, with the same biological parents. A fundamental question in social science research centers on why children in the same family have different outcomes. • Not only in the focus on fathers, research on the role of parenting (in child-specific designs) has not been able to tease apart the mechanisms of influence or justify which parenting factors are specific to which child outcomes. • For example, in certain groups of children father involvement may be associated with low risk for boys but not for girls (delinquency and homelessness) or for girls but not for boys (education). • Findings differ across different socio-economic groups. • Even in two-parent families of young children, father involvement in programs appears to be related to mother involvement. At the same time, in dysfunctional two-parent families, the pattern has not been seen.

31. Refocusing the Argument • The argument should be refocused to consider the (un)intended consequences of limited options for children, few supports, and poor quality schooling. • Consider: • Many Black and Latino children are behind when they enter kindergarten. Children know by about the third grade whether they are part of the mainstream or of another, more marginal world. Those who are routinely disciplined or struggle with schoolwork mentally drop out at this point. They actually leave school in the ninth grade, the major exit ramp from the path to college. The ninth grade is also the school year when many youth commit their first criminal offenses. • Learning support is important in early childhood while the brain is still growing and behavioral patterns are being formed. A lot of a child’s future life story is written by the third or fourth grade. How do fathers fit into this future life story?

32. Issues and Questions that Persist • How can we identify the major themes in father involvement and reconceptualize parent involvement in young children’s schooling? • How do we understand the diversity of families and family forms when we attempt to engage children, fathers, parents, and families? • How are the issues of father/parent/child engagement constructed? • What component features of fathers’, parents’, and children’s lives and identities would we need to consider? • What are the implications for curricular development and the continued professional development of early childhood educators?