The Role of Men's Childbearing Intentions in Father Involvement

• Author: Isaac Maddow‐Zimet,Laura Duberstein Lindberg,Kathryn Kost
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12377
• Date: 01 February 2017
• Published date: 01 February 2017

L D L, K K,  I M-Z The Guttmacher

Institute

The Role of Men’s Childbearing Intentions in Father

Involvement

An expanding body of research has investigated

factors that inuence fathers’ involvement with

their children. Generally overlooked has been

the role of pregnancyintentions on men’s father-

ing behaviors. In this study, the authors used

nationally representative data from men inter-

viewed in the 2002 and 2006–2010 National

Survey of Family Growth to examine relation-

ships between fathers’ pregnancy intentions and

multiple aspects of their parental involvement.

Using propensity score methods to control for

confounding, they found that men wereless likely

to live with a young child from a mistimed than

intended pregnancy and that among nonresident

fathers, mistimed pregnancies were associated

with lower levels of visitation and consequently

reduced participation in caregiving and play.

Among both resident and nonresident fathers,

mistimed pregnancies were also associated with

lower self-appraisals of fathering quality when

The Guttmacher Institute, 125 Maiden Lane, New York,

NY 10038 (llindberg@guttmacher.org).

This article was edited by Kelly Raley.

© 2016 The Authors. Journal of Marriage and Familypub-

lished by WileyPeriodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Coun-

cil on Family Relations.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Cre-

ativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which

permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited and is not used

for commercial purposes.

KeyWords: early childhood, fathering, fathers, gender roles,

pregnancy.

compared with intended pregnancies; for non-

resident fathers, however, this association was

moderated by other involvement.

Fathers’ involvementin their children’s lives has

been increasingly linked to positive outcomes

for their children’s health and well-being, and

researchers have focused on factors inuenc-

ing levels and patterns of involvement (Cabrera,

Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2014; Lamb,

2010). Largely unaddressed has been the role

of pregnancy intentions in fathering behaviors.

Pregnancy intention is a measure of the desire to

have a child just prior to the time of conception

(Campbell & Mosher, 2000). Conventionally,

pregnancies are categorized as intended (wanted

at the time of conception), mistimed (not wanted

at the time of conception, but wanted sometime

in the future), or unwanted (not wanted at time

of conception or ever); the latter two are often

referred to together as unintended.

Research to date has focused primarily on

the consequences of mothers’ intentions (Gip-

son, Koenig, & Hindin, 2008) overlooking the

experiences of fathers. Yet in a recent nationally

representative study, fathers reported a third of

births in the past 5 years as unintended, a pro-

portion similar to that reported by women (Lind-

berg & Kost, 2014). Parenting children resulting

from unintended pregnancies is thus a common

experience for American men, but little is known

about how men’s childbearing intentions inu-

ence involvement with their child.

44 Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (February 2017): 44–59

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12377

Men’s Childbearing Intentions and Father Involvement 45

We use data from men’s interviews in

the 2002 and 2006–2010 National Survey of

Family Growth (NSFG) to examine relation-

ships between men’s pregnancy intentions

and involvement with their child. We focus

on fathers with a child younger than age 5,

linking self-reported pregnancy intentions with

behavioral and attitudinal indicators of father

involvement. First, we consider how inten-

tion status is associated with father and child

coresidence. We then consider the experiences

of resident and nonresident fathers separately,

given the groups’ different daily access to their

child. We examine variation by intention status

in the frequency of caregiving and play, fre-

quency of contact (for nonresident fathers), and

self-appraisal as fathers.

B

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

“Father involvement” is a nuanced and evolving

construct. The widely used Lamb–Pleck concep-

tualization of father involvement has the follow-

ing three distinct parts: the father’s accessibility

to, engagement with, and responsibility for his

child (Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1985,

1987). Later conceptualizations have expanded

to better recognize qualitative and emotional

aspects of fathering (Marsiglio & Roy, 2013;

Pleck, 2010). When compared with women, men

often have less cultural and institutional support

for parenthood, resulting in a wider variation in

their level and type of involvement(Edin & Nel-

son, 2013; Marsiglio & Roy, 2012).

Our study of father involvement is informed

by a theoretical framework of fathering that

integrates identity theory and life course per-

spectives (Marsiglio, 1995; Marsiglio & Roy

2013; Rane & McBride, 2000). Identity theory

has been inuential in guiding research on

father involvement generally (Fox & Bruce,

2001; Rane & McBride, 2000), and under

specic conditions such as among divorced

or other nonresident fathers (see, e.g. Henley

& Pasley, 2005; Olmstead, Futris, & Pasley,

2009). Identity theory posits that identities are

“internalized sets of role expectations” (Stryker,

1987, p. 90); the strength and form of an iden-

tity inuences participation in related behaviors.

Thus, father involvement is theorized to stem

from the meaning and importance that men

assign to being fathers. The more men identify

as fathers and the more salient the fathering role

is to their self-identity, the more engaged with

their child they will be (Ihinger-Tallman,Pasley,

& Buehler, 1993).

A life course perspective brings attention to

the importance of timing and context to under-

stand life transitions such as fathering (Elder,

Johnson, & Crosnoe, 2003). The location of a

birth within an individual’slife course inuences

the ongoing development of his fathering iden-

tity as well as inuences whether a man charac-

terizes a specic pregnancy as intended or unin-

tended. In addition, life course theory recognizes

that father involvement can begin even before

the child is born, and multiple studies focus on

father involvement during the prenatal period

(Bronte-Tinkew, Scott, & Horowitz, 2009; Mar-

siglio, Lohan, & Culley, 2013), which has been

shown to be related to greater involvement in

children’s later lives (Cabrera, Fagan, & Farrie,

2008). Our focus on pregnancy intentions shifts

the start of this father involvement and father

identity further back to the time of conception.

Engaging in the planning of the pregnancy is a

form of involvement that may inuence father

identity and thus other aspects of their involve-

ment.

Our central hypothesis is that men will have

reduced father involvement with children result-

ing from unintended pregnancies. We posit that

childbearing intentions may be considered a

proxy measure of the centrality of the father

role to a man’s identity at the time of the preg-

nancy. These intentions are indicative of men’s

orientation to fathering: Intended pregnancies

reect men’s desire to engage in fathering at that

time, whereas men with mistimed or unwanted

births are hypothesized to be less motivated to

devote the time and personal resources needed

to engage in the behaviors that support a father

identity. The strength and centrality of a father-

ing identity reects men’s experiences with all

of their children as well as potentially varying in

relationship to each child as a result of the timing

and context of a particular pregnancy.

Our analysis considers both how pregnancy

intentions are related to whether a father lives

with his child and whether there are potentially

differing associations between pregnancy inten-

tions and father involvement for resident and

nonresident fathers. When compared with res-

ident fathers, nonresident fathers have weaker

normative expectations around their father

involvement, and their identity as a father may