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Title: Are Fathers Fungible? Patterns of Co-Resident Adult Men in Maritally Disrupted Families and Children's Well-Being
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Hawkins, Alan J. Eggebeen, David J. |
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Are Fathers Fungible? Patterns of Co-Resident Adult Men in Maritally Disrupted Families and Children's Well-Being Journal of Marriage and Family 53,4 (November 1991): 958-972. Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/353000 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Council on Family Relations Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Childhood Residence; Children; Children, Academic Development; Children, Behavioral Development; Children, Well-Being; Family Structure; Fathers; Fathers, Absence; Fathers, Biological; Fathers, Influence; General Assessment; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Racial Differences; Temperament; Verbal Memory (McCarthy Scale) This study addresses the relationship of biological and social fathers to young children's well-being. The authors outline three general positions in this debate: biological fathers are important to their young children's well-being and are hard to replace; fathers are important, but social fathers can effectively replace biological fathers; and fathers are peripheral to young children's lives and do not significantly impact children's well-being. To address this question, children who had differing experiences with co-resident adult men are compared using a sample of 865 four-to-six-year-old children from the Children of the NLSY. Children in five longitudinal patterns of experiences with co-resident adult men in maritally disrupted families were identified (No Male, Grandfather, Stepfather, Reunited Father, and Chaotic) and compared to children in intact families. Thirty-one percent of the disrupted children were in the No Male pattern, but more than two-thirds were in one of the other disrupted patterns. Hierarchical regression models found no differences in verbal-intellectual functioning between children in intact families and children in any of the disrupted patterns. For the measure of psychosocial dysfunctioning, only children in the Grandfather pattern were significantly different from children in the Intact pattern. Further analyses revealed that it was white children in this three-generation living arrangement who experienced problems. This study lends some support to the position that fathers, both biological and social, are peripheral to young children's intellectual and psychosocial functioning. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hawkins, Alan J. and David J. Eggebeen. "Are Fathers Fungible? Patterns of Co-Resident Adult Men in Maritally Disrupted Families and Children's Well-Being." Journal of Marriage and Family 53,4 (November 1991): 958-972.
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