Letter from the Editors
Preface
- In Between the Images: The Therapeutic Benefits of Unconscious Exposure
- A Call for the Proper Evaluation of Treatment for Co-Occuring BD and SUD
- A Meta-Analysis on Father Involvement and Early Childhood Social-Emotional Development
- Loneliness and Depression among Foster Children: The Role of Caregiver Ethnic Match
- Father Involvement in Ethnically Diverse Populations
- Book Reading Styles in Bilingual Head Start Classrooms
- Demographic and Relational Predictors of Social Self-Awareness in Urban Elementary Classrooms
- Language Attitudes of Puerto Ricans Toward English and Bilingualism
- The Stories Friends Share: Structural and Thematic Analyses
Ryann McNeil
Researchers, practitioners, and policy makers recognize the early influential role of fathers in their infants’ socio-emotional and cognitive development, and recognize the cultural embeddedness of father involvement. Nonetheless, little research has examined father involvement across ethnically diverse groups in early infancy. The current study uses a time-diary approach coupled with surveys to explore how fathers engage with their 14 month infants, how demographic and social factors affect the quality of the father-infant relationship, and how the child’s gender influences these interactions. Mothers of African American, Dominican, and Mexican backgrounds were recruited from 3 New York City hospitals. When infants were 1, 6, 14, and 24 months mothers were interviewed for an hour using a time-diary approach in which they reported infants’ activities during the prior day (24 hours) based on what infants were doing and who was engaged in those activities. They also reported on their relationship to father, education, etc. This study reports on the 14-month interviews of 168 mothers. From the diary data, infants’ time spent with fathers was coded into eight categories: care-giving, toy play, unstructured, literacy, television, child outings, general outings, and childcare. Various differences emerged by ethnicity and child gender. Mexican fathers spent the most time in care-giving activities, whereas African American and Dominican fathers spent more time in unstructured play and television activities. Fathers spent significantly more time engaged in book-reading activities with their daughters, and typically spent more time watching television with their sons. Aspects of the mother-father relationship related to father time with infants. The activities infants share with their fathers are shaped by child gender, family cultural practices, and the mother-father relationship. Discussion focuses on the challenges to studying father involvement in infancy, and the value of diary approaches in developmental research.