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Title: Do Fathers Make a Difference? The Determinants and Consequences of Fathers' Absence from the Home of Younger Children
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Mott, Frank L. |
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Do Fathers Make a Difference? The Determinants and Consequences of Fathers' Absence from the Home of Younger Children Book Prospectus, Center for Human Resource Research, The Ohio State University, October 1991 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Center for Human Resource Research Keyword(s): Children; Children, Home Environment; Fathers, Absence; Marital Dissolution; Marital Instability; Mothers The traditional American family, encompassing two parents and two children represents only a modest proportion of all family units. This phenomenon is a reflection of many social, economic and demographic forces, not the least of which are the extraordinary recent increases in marital dissolution and the tendency of substantial proportions of women to have and raise children not only outside of formal marriage arrangements, but without having the father of the child (or children) present. While there is no doubt that raising children in a socially and psychologically less privileged environment has negative consequences for mother and children, the extent to which this is true for the contemporary generation of fatherless American children is at least partially open to question. Much of the available academic literature which examines the determinants and consequences--for mother and child--of marital "disruption" is based on intellectual and empirical premises more attuned to the family and social structure of prior generations. Thus, the implied consequences of fatherless homes are often based on somewhat dated notions of normative "correctness". To some extent, the tendency for many researchers to remain wedded to traditional concepts and methods is linked with data constraints. Most data sources are quite limiting in terms of defining relationship processes over time, because most research has focused on the association between the legal form of the parental relationship and its effect on the children rather than concentrating on the parent-child relationship. This research uses a unique data set, the NLSY, to explore several issues: First, the family experiences of children from their perspective and second, the independent effect of various father absence family forms on a child's intellectual and emotional development. |
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Bibliography Citation
Mott, Frank L. "Do Fathers Make a Difference? The Determinants and Consequences of Fathers' Absence from the Home of Younger Children." Book Prospectus, Center for Human Resource Research, The Ohio State University, October 1991. |