Low-income, nonresident father involvement with their toddlers: variation by fathers' race and ethnicity.
Using data from a racially and ethnically diverse sample of low-income mothers of 2-year-old children participating in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (N = 883), the authors examined fathers' education and employment, mother-father relationship, and mothers' relationships with kin in the household to explain variation in nonresident father involvement across racial and ethnic groups. Nonresident White fathers were less involved with their children than were African American and Latino fathers. This difference was explained by the status of mother-father relationships. White nonresident fathers were less likely than minority nonresident fathers to maintain romantic relationships with their child's mother. Mothers in the White father group were also more likely to re-partner, which negatively related to biological fathers' involvement. These findings suggest that approaches to strengthen nonresident father involvement in children's lives need to consider how father ethnicity and mother-father relations are associated with differential patterns of father involvement.
Cabrera
Natasha J
NJ
Department of Human Development, College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. ncabrera@umd.edu
Ryan
Rebecca M
RM
Mitchell
Stephanie J
SJ
Shannon
Jacqueline D
JD
Tamis-Lemonda
Catherine S
CS
D001741:Black or African American; D002648:Child; D005006:Ethnicity; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers; D016487:Parenting; D020954:Single-Parent Family; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D044465:White People