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Conference: Conference on Father Involvement (Oct 1996 : Bethesda, MD, US). This paper uses retrospective child care data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the patterns and determinants of paternal child care during a child's 1st 3 yrs of life. Data were from 2-parent families and focused on 1,188 children of 863 mothers who worked sometime between the child's birth date and the child's 3rd birthday. It was found that father care is a fairly stable form of care; the average number of months that father care is used during a year is similar to the duration of other forms of child care. Paternal care is often used in conjunction with other types of child care including relative, nonrelative, and center care. Findings also show that different characteristics predict paternal child care according to the timing and extent of care. For those fathers who are the exclusive providers of child care during the 1st yr of life, the incidence of paternal child care is associated with race or ethnicity and a mother's identification with nontraditional gender roles. For those fathers who provide some of the total care during the 1st 3 yrs of a child's life, the incidence of paternal child care is more highly associated with the flexibility of a mother's and father's work schedule. ((c) 2000 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved). Note(s): An earlier version was presented at the Conference on Father Involvement and at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America, Mar, 1997.; Special Issue: Fatherhood: Research, interventions and policies. Part I.