Paternal Caregivers’ Parenting Practices and Psychological Functioning among African American Youth Living in Urban Public Housing

• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12221
• Author: Von E. Nebbitt,Otima Doyle,Jennifer Stephens,Qiana R. Cryer‐Coupet,Margaret Lombe,Trenette Clark Goings
• Published date: 01 September 2017

Paternal Caregivers’ Parenting Practices and

Psychological Functioning among African American

Youth Living in Urban Public Housing

OTIMA DOYLE*

TRENETTE CLARK GOINGS

†

QIANA R. CRYER-COUPET

‡

MARGARET LOMBE

§

JENNIFER STEPHENS*

VON E. NEBBITT*

Structural factors associated with public housing contribute to living environments that

expose families to adverse life events that may in turn directly imp act parenting and youth

outcomes. However, despite the growth in research on fathers, research on families in pub-

lic housing has practically excluded fathers and the role fathers play in the well-being of

their adolescents. Using a sample of 660 African American adolescents recruited from pub-

lic housing, we examined the relationship between paternal caregivers’ (i.e., fathers’ and

father figures’) parenting practices and adolescents’ depressive symptoms, attitudes towar d

deviance, and self-efficacy. Using a latent profile analysis (LPA), we confirmed a four-class

model of paternal parenting practices ranging from high to low levels of monitoring and

encouragement. Results from a one-way ANOVA indicated that paternal caregivers with

high (compared to moderate) levels of encouragement and monitoring were associated with

youth who reported less depressive symptoms, higher levels of self-efficacy, and less favor-

able attitudes toward deviance. Discriminant analysis results indicated that approxi-

mately half of the sample were correctly classified into two paternal caregiver classes. The

findings provide evidence that some of these caregivers engage in parenting practices that

support youths’ psychological functioning. More research is needed to determine what

accounts for the variability in levels of paternal encouragement and supervision, including

environmental influences, particularly for paternal caregivers exhibiting moderate-to-low

levels of paternal encouragement and monitoring.

Keywords: African Ame rican Fathers; Youth; Psychological Functioning; Parenting

Practices

Fam Proc 56:752–765, 2017

*Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL.

†

School of Social Work, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

‡

North Carolina State University, Durham, NC.

§

School of Social Work, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Otima Doyle, Jane Addams College of

Social Work, 1040 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607. E-mail: doyleo@uic.edu.

This project was supported by the Faculty Start-up Fund from the Office of the Provost, Howard Univer-

sity, and a grant from the Silberman Foundation. Dr. Doyle also received support for the development of

this manuscript from the Institute for Race and Public Policy’s Faculty Fellowship Program at the

University of Illinois, Chicago.

752

Family Process, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2017 ©2016 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12221