Perceptions of Nonresident Father Involvement Among Low‐Income Youth and Their Single Parents
| Author | Sonia Molloy,Sara Spiers,Elizabeth I. Johnson,Joyce A. Arditti |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12346 |
J A. A Virginia Tech
S M Penn State York
S S Virginia Tech
E I. J University of Tennessee
Perceptions of Nonresident Father Involvement
Among Low-Income Youth and Their Single Parents
Objective: To examine sources of theoretical
variation in youth and caregiver perceptions
of nonresident father involvement.
Background: Relationship complexity and envi-
ronmental factors can result in complicated
trajectories of father involvement. We exam-
ined both caregiver and youth perceptions
of nonresident father–child relationships among
low-income, single-parent families that were
often affected by paternal incarceration.
Method: The present study drew from a sample
of families served by a Big Brothers Big Sisters
(BBBS) program in a metropolitan region of a
Mid-Atlantic state. In-depth interviews with 27
caregivers and their 33 children were the basis
of a qualitative analysis.
Results: Findings revealed 4 typologies
of perceived father involvement: disengaged,
sporadic, encouraged, and engaged. Descrip-
tion was thickest regarding the complexities
paternal incarceration posed for nonresident
fathers’ relationships with children and care-
givers’ attempts to mediate between children
and fathers.
Department of Human Development, 311 Wallace Hall,
Blacksburg, VA 24061 (arditti@vt.edu).
Key Words: At-risk children and families, coparenting
fathers and fatherhood, criminal justice and incarceration,
qualitative research.
Conclusion: Narratives about nonresident
fathers were situated within complicated ecolo-
gies of environmental press such as incarcera-
tion, geographic separation, and relationship
quality challenges that changed as families
adapted to new realities and shifts in kin net-
works. Maternal mediation between children
and their fathers was not a simple judgment
and driven by real concerns about children’s
well-being in highly stigmatized environments
or older youths’ contact preferences.
Implications: Caregivers’ concerns about
children’s fathers need to be understood
as part of any programmatic efforts aimed
at enhancing coparenting in nonresident-father
families. Families with encouraged forms
of nonresident-father involvement might
be particularly receptive to intervention
aimed at facilitating positive father–child
relationships.
Scholars have struggled to identify the mech-
anisms that drive children’s relationships with
their nonresident fathers (Brown & Manning,
2012). The lack of conceptual and empirical
clarity regarding the experience of nonres-
idential fatherhood stems largely from the
complexity of family arrangements associated
with paternal nonresidence, the changing con-
tours of nonresident status over time, and the
68 Family Relations 68 (February 2019): 68–84
DOI:10.1111/fare.12346
Nonresident Father Involvement 69
failure of research to consider multiple rela-
tionships with the same father and complex kin
networks (Roy & Smith, 2013). The purpose
of the present study was to unpack variation
in perceptions of nonresident father–child
relationships among a sample of low-income,
single-parent families, many of whom reported
instances of current or previous paternal incar-
ceration. Our aim in examining this purposeful
group of study participants was to advance
theory about forms of father involvement that
transcended structural parameters of father
presence versus absence and were sensitive to
relationship quality among family members as
well as the real lives of youth and their care-
givers. We sought to include not only caregiver
perceptions of children’s fathers, but children’s
interpretations of fathering. Children’s per-
spectives provided a window to gain insight
regarding how they saw their fathers, their expe-
riences with diverse forms of engagement, and
their own agency with regard to encouraging
or withdrawing from relationships with fathers.
Our grand research question was as follows:
How do youth and their caregivers inter-
pret experience with their nonresident fathers
within contexts of economic disadvantage and
(oftentimes) paternal incarceration?
Using a modied analytic induction quali-
tative methodology informed by extant theory
(Charmaz, 2006), we drew from interviews of
children aged 7 to 16 years and their caregivers,
who experienced complex family transitions
and economic disadvantage. Our qualitative
approach was consistent with calls for innova-
tive research aimed at subjective perceptions of
fatherhood that considers the quality rather than
the quantity of engagement, particularly among
low-income families with nonresidential fathers
(Roy & Kwon, 2007). On the basis of a qualita-
tive analysis of the narrative data, we were able
to attend to family-level processes and changes
that seemed to inuence father involvement
(Roy & Burton, 2007; Roy & Kwon, 2007).
C N F
I L-I F
Despite advances in the scholarship on fathers,
the role of active engagement is still used
as a prominent assessment of father involve-
ment (Castillo, Welch, & Sarver, 2013). Active
engagement, dened as providing economic
support, nurturance, and being available for
children (Palkovitz, 2014), may unwittingly
hamper an understanding of more nuanced
and uid forms of fathering. For example,
relationships between youth and nonresident
fathers have been categorized as “disengaged”
per men’s declining involvement over time with
children as assessed by typical metrics of contact
and father engagement in the family (Cheadle,
Amato, & King, 2010). Yet disengagement on
the surface may obscure a complex web of
social arrangements and movement in and out
of fathering roles (Roy & Smith, 2013) as well
as maternal behaviors aimed at securing men’s
contributions in families (Roy & Burton, 2007).
Low-income nonresident fathers in particular
may offer “few objective indicators of parenting
behavior,” heightening the need to understand
how “varied meaning” shapes fathering oppor-
tunities and experiences (Roy & Kwon, 2007,
p. 235) as well as the ways in which low-income
mothers ensure their children’s well-being (Roy
& Burton, 2007).
Multiple contextual factors are related to tra-
jectories of father involvement, with economi-
cally disadvantaged fathers showing patterns of
engagement that either do not t more typical
models of father involvement or reect adap-
tations to environmental constraints. Primary
among these fathering constraints for econom-
ically disadvantaged, and in particular African
American, families is the experience of pater-
nal incarceration (Brown & Manning, 2012; Roy
& Smith, 2013). Critics argue that carceral con-
nement, via mass imprisonment policies and
racist police strategies, is a central means of
driving institutional racism by disenfranchising
millions of African Americans and perpetuat-
ing a historical pattern of structural disadvantage
that is dened by race (Alexander, 2010; John-
son, 2011; Staples, 2011). This racialized “caste
system” (Alexander, 2010) has implications for
families and has contributed to increases in
single-mother households and Black fathers’
nonresidence (Arditti, 2012; Edin, Nelson, &
Paranal, 2004). It is estimated that up to 2.7
million children have a parent in prison or
jail—the largest proportion of whom are Black,
have incarcerated fathers, and are economically
disadvantaged (Wakeeld & Wildeman, 2015).
Racial disparities in prison populations extend
to the family; among children born in 1990, by
14 years of age one in four Black children had a
father in prison compared with fewer than 1 in 25
White children (Wildeman, 2009). Incarceration
To continue reading
Request your trial