Nonresident fathers' seeking continuity in relationships with their children: Commitment, personal change, and reliance on others

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• Author: Dominic Violi,Cannas Kwok,Peter Lewis,Nathan J. Wilson
• Date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.13075

RESEARCH

Nonresident fathers’seeking continuity in

relationships with their children: Commitment,

personal change, and reliance on others

Dominic Violi

1

| Cannas Kwok

2

| Peter Lewis

1

|

Nathan J. Wilson

1

1

School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western

Sydney University, Hawkesbury Campus,

Richmond, Australia

2

School of Nursing, Paramedics and

Healthcare Sciences, Charles Sturt University,

School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western

Sydney University, Richmond, Australia

Correspondence

Dominic Violi, School of Nursing and

Midwifery, Western Sydney University,

Hawkesbury Campus, Locked Bag

3, Richmond, NSW 2753, Australia.

Email: 20656632@student.westernsydney.

edu.au

Abstract

Objective: To explore intrinsic and extrinsic factors that

help nonresident fathers’continuing relationships with

their children.

Background: Research on nonresident fathers tends to

focus on rates or trajectories of contact and the perspec-

tives or experiences of children or others and highlights

significant barriers to development and maintenance of

relationships between nonresident fathers and their chil-

dren. What helps the growth and development of nonresi-

dent fathers’relationships with their children are less well

understood and less frequently researched. This research

sought to fill the gap in the literature of what is known

that helps nonresident fathers maintain meaningful rela-

tionships with their children.

Method: A qualitative research approach was chosen using

thematic analysis of semistructured, in-depth interviews.

Recruitment was via social media and community sites

targeting nonresident fathers after divorce.

Results: Participants highlighted deep commitment to

ongoing fathering and a deep desire for meaningful rela-

tionships with children. The experience of divorce had a

highly negative impact, but some positives emerged that

enhanced their relationship. Significant others played con-

tingent roles helping participants improve their relation-

ships with their children.

Conclusion: Continuity of relationships with children was

the direct result of participants’actions to remain involved

and their ongoing commitment to their children through

strong and unwavering fatherhood role salience. These

Received: 7 August 2023 Revised: 29 May 2024 Accepted: 29 June 2024

DOI: 10.1111/fare.13075

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2024 The Author(s). Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2024;73:2945–2960. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 2945

factors, together with actions for self-improvement, man-

aging change, and fostering cooperative relationships with

relevant others, helped fathers maintain positive engage-

ment and relationships with their children.

Implications: The nonresident fathers in this study relied

on their own initiatives, resilience, and resources to remain

engaged with their children. Policies and programs should

respond to and encourage the development of policies and

programs that help nonresident fathers’relationships with

children in practical and meaningful ways.

KEYWORDS

divorce, fatherhood, fatherhood role salience, nonresident fathers,

relationships

Separation and divorce are consistently high in most Western democracies. The incidence of sepa-

ration is not calculated in Australia, but the number of divorces has remained steady since no fault

divorce was enacted in Australia in 1975. The processes of separation and divorce are complicated

when the partnership has produced children and can result in protracted negotiations on an

interpersonal—and in many cases, legal—level. Negotiations can hinge on custody of the children,

including their ongoing living arrangements. Most often, children reside with the mother at a sepa-

rate location from their father, and the actual number of nonresident fathers is largely unknown.

This is because “data on fathers are not systematically collected resulting in an acknowledged evi-

dence gap relating to fathers in general and non-resident fathers specifically”(Poole et al., 2016,

p. 224), which in turn means that there are gaps in our knowledge as inaccurate proxies (i.e., lone

mothers) have to be used to estimate the number of fathers in different relationships with their chil-

dren, so that the actual number of nonresident fathers is not known. In this way, “The evidence

gap is exacerbated for nonresident fathers who are a hard-to-reach group; unlike lone mothers they

cannot be identified through government records. Representative primary research with non-

resident fathers is limited leading to the use of proxies to quantify and investigate the population”

(Poole et al., 2016, p. 225). Although these data can provide important factors in nonresident

father and child relationships, they “cannot comprehensively capture paternal perspectives”(Poole

et al., 2016, p. 225). This has important implications for new research, how the phenomenon of

nonresident fatherhood is understood, the experiences of nonresident fathers, and their ongoing

relationships with their children from fathers’own perspectives.

Fatherhood in general, and nonresident fatherhood in particular, are roles that are currently

underrepresented in research literature. The terms mother and parent are frequently used inter-

changeably, which has a twofold effect. First, mothers are generally seen as children’s primary

caregivers and thereby representative of parenthood in general (Schoppe-Sullivan &

Fagan, 2020). Second, this tends to conceptualize parenthood as being nongendered—that is,

fathers and mothers are treated interchangeably (Kim et al., 2021) despite the dominant focus

on the mother–child dyad (Cabrera et al., 2018). This can lead to a valorization of the mother’s

role over the father’s (Smoliak et al., 2022) and a superficial engagement with more complex

gendered realities (Henz, 2019). In this way, “parenting”can become conflated with “mother-

ing”in policy and practice (Meah & Jackson, 2016).

A growing body of evidence indicates that fathers’engagement with children has been increas-

ing in Western countries for several decades and the role of “father”in men’s lives and the lives of

their children has evolved. Research suggests a significant positive correlation between a father’s

identity status and his involvement with his children (Fagan, 2021). Fatherhood rolesalience refers

to how strongly a man identifies as a father and lives out that role (Adamsons & Pasley, 2016):

2946 FAMILY RELATIONS