Father involvement, family poverty and adversity, and young children’s behaviour in intact two-parent families

Authors

  • Eirini Flouri
  • Lars-Erik Malmberg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14301/llcs.v3i2.170

Keywords:

child behaviour, cross-lags, fathers, MCS, parenting, temperament

Abstract

Using data from the first two sweeps of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) we explored the association between father involvement and young children’s emotional and behavioural adjustment  among continuously two-parent families (N = 9,498). We also investigated the role of father involvement in moderating the association between contextual risk (family-level adverse life events and family-level socio-economic disadvantage) and young children’s adjustment. We found that early father involvement was negatively associated with later emotional symptoms, but no other problem behaviour, and dampened the effect of socio-economic disadvantage, but not adverse life events, on emotional symptoms. Our findings highlighted the importance of considering specificity at both child outcome and contextual risk levels when modelling father involvement effects.

Author Biography

Eirini Flouri

Professor of Developmental Psychology, Dept of Psychology and Human Development, IoE

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Published

2012-03-21