Abstract
Models that incorporate environmental and contextual influences on parenting offer a promising perspective for understanding fathering. The goal of the present study was to examine the influences of religion on fathers’ roles in the family system, and it addressed two questions: Do specific measures of religion better predict father involvement than global measures? Does religiosity predict levels of father involvement and/or the quality of father–child relationships after accounting for their personality and marital quality? One hundred seventy-four fathers and their 8–14 year old children completed measures of the quantity and quality of fathers’ parenting, religious lives, personality and marital quality. Results indicated that more specific measures of religion were better predictors of father–child relationships than global measures. Fathers who viewed parenting as a sanctified role and identified religion as a source of support were more involved in their children’s lives, even after accounting for their personality and marital quality. These findings call for further research to better understand the interrelations among individual, family, and contextual factors that shape fathers’ involvement in parenting.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aldous, J., & Mulligan, G. M. (2002). Fathers’ child care and children’s behavior problems. Journal of Family Issues, 23(5), 624–647.
Almeida, D. M., Wethington, E., & Chandler, A. L. (1999). Daily transmission of tensions between marital dyads and parent-child dyads. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 49–61.
Amato, P. R., & Rivera, F. (1999). Paternal involvement and children’s behavior problems. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61(2), 375–384.
Bartkowski, J. P., & Xu, X. (2000). Distant patriarchs or expressive dads? The discourse and practice of fathering in conservative protestant families. The Sociological Quarterly, 41(3), 465–485.
Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). Ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, G. L., McBride, B. A., Shin, N., & Bost, K. M. (2007). Parenting predictors of father-child attachment security: Interactive effects of father involvement and fathering quality. Fathering, 5(3), 197–220.
Bruce, C., & Fox, G. L. (1997). Measuring father involvement among lower-income White and African-American populations. Presented at the National Council on Family Relations, Crystal City, VA.
Bruce, C., & Fox, G. L. (1999). Accounting for patterns of father involvement: Age of child, father-child co-residence, and father role salience. Sociological Inquiry, 69, 458–476.
Cabrera, N., Fitzgerald, H. E., Bradley, R. H., & Roggman, R. (2007). Modeling the dynamics of paternal influences on children over the life course. Applied Development Science, 11(4), 185–189.
Cabrera, N., Tarkow, W., & Shannon, J. (2006). Fathers’ and mothers’ contribution to their preschoolers’ emotional regulation. Presented at World Association of the Infant Mental Health, Paris, France.
Cochran, D. L. (1997). African American fathers focus on the family: A group approach to increasing visibility in research. Social Work with Groups, 20, 75–88.
Cummings, E. M., Merrilees, C. E., & George, M. W. (2010). Fathers, marriages, and families: Revisiting and updating the framework for fathering in family context. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (5th ed., pp. 154–176). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
DeMaris, A., Mahoney, A., & Pargament, K. I. (2011). Doing the scut work of infant care: Does religiousness encourage father involvement? Journal of Marriage and Family, 73(2), 354–368.
Dumas, J. E., & Nissley-Tsiopinis, J. (2006). Parental global religiousness, sanctification of parenting, and positive and negative religious coping as predictors of parental and child functioning. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 16(4), 289–310.
Flouri, E., & Buchanan, A. (2002). Life satisfaction in teenage boys: The moderating role of father involvement and bullying. Aggressive Behavior, 28(2), 126–133.
Goncey, E. A., & van Dulmen, M. H. M. (2010). Fathers do make a difference: Parental involvement and adolescent alcohol use. Fathering, 8(1), 93–108.
Grych, J. H., Seid, M., & Fincham, F. D. (1992). Assessing marital conflict from the child’s perspective: The children’s perception of interpersonal conflict scale. Child Development, 63(3), 558–572.
Harris, K. H., Furstenberg, F. F., & Manner, J. K. (1998). Paternal involvement with adolescents in intact families. Demography, 35, 201–216.
Harter, S. (1982). The perceived competence scale for children. Child Development, 53, 87–97.
Holmes, E. K., & Huston, A. C. (2010). Understanding positive father–child interaction: Children’s, fathers’, and mothers’ contributions. Fathering, 8, 203–225.
Hood, R. W, Jr., & Belzen, J. A. (2005). Research methods in the psychology of religion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 21–42). New York: The Guilford Press.
Hwang, C. P., & Lamb, M. E. (1997). Father involvement in Sweden: A longitudinal study of its stability and correlates. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 21(3), 621–632.
Idler, E. (1999). The Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Workgroup. Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research. Kalamazoo, MI: John E. Fetzer Institute.
John, O., Donahue, E., & Kentle, R. (1991). The ‘‘big five” inventory—versions 4a and 54. Technical Report, Institute of Personality Assessment and Research. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley.
Kerns, K. A., Klepac, L., & Cole, A. (1996). Peer relationships and preadolescents’ perceptions of security in the mother-child relationship. Developmental Psychology, 32, 457–466.
Lamb, M. E., & Lewis, C. (2013). Father–child relationships. In N. Cabrera & C. S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement (2nd ed., pp. 119–134). New York: Routledge.
Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Paternal behavior in humans. American Zoologist, 25(3), 883–894.
Lynch, M., & Cicchetti, D. (1991). Patterns of relatedness in maltreated and non-maltreated children: Connections among multiple representational models. Development and Psychopathology, 3, 207–226.
Mahoney, A. (2010). Religion in families 1999 to 2009: A relational religion perspective. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 805–827.
Mahoney, A., & Cano, A. (2014). Introduction to the special section on religion and spirituality in family life: Pathways between relational spirituality, family relationships and personal well-being. Journal of Family Psychology, 28(6), 735–738.
Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., & Hernandez, K. M. (2013). Heaven on earth: Beneficial effects of sanctification for individual and interpersonal well-being. In J. Henry (Ed.), The Oxford book of happiness (pp. 397–410). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Jewell, T., Swank, A. B., Scott, E., Emery, E., & Rye, M. (1999). Marriage and the spiritual realm: The role of proximal and distal constructs in marital functioning. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 1–18.
Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Tarakeshwar, N., & Swank, A. B. (2001). Religion in the home in the 1980s and 1990s: A meta-analytic review and conceptual analysis of links between religion, marriage, and parenting. Journal of Family Psychology, 15(4), 559–596.
McBride, B. A., Brown, G. L., Bost, K. K., Shin, N., Vaughn, B., & Korth, B. (2005). Paternal identity, maternal gatekeeping, and father involvement. Family Relations, 54, 360–372.
McBride, B. A., & Rane, T. R. (1996). Father/male involvement in early childhood programs. Urbana, IL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED400123).
Murray-Swank, A., Mahoney, A., & Pargament, K. (2006). Sanctification of parenting: Links to corporal punishment and parental warmth among biblically conservative and liberal mothers. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 16(4), 271–287.
Muthén, B., & Muthén, L. (2013). Mplus user’s guide (Vol. 7). Los Angeles: Muthén & Muthén.
National Center for Family & Marriage Research. (2015). Measures Snapshots. Retrieved from http://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/measures-snapshots.html.
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2000). Factors associated with fathers’ caregiving activities and sensitivity with young children. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 200–219.
Norton, R. (1983). Measuring marital quality: A critical look at the dependent variable. Journal of Marriage and Family, 45(1), 141–151.
Palkovitz, R. (1984). Parental attitudes and father’s interactions with their 5-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 20, 1054–1060.
Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Guilford Press.
Pargament, K., & Mahoney, A. (2005). Sacred matters: Sanctification as a vital topic for the psychology of religion. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 179–198.
Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1999). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), 710–724.
Parke, R. D., Dennis, J., Flyr, M. L., Morris, K. L., Leidy, M. S., & Schofield, T. J. (2005). Fathers: Cultural and ecological perspectives. In T. Luster & L. Okagaki (Eds.), Parenting: An ecological perspective (pp. 103–144). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Pleck, J. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed., pp. 66–103). NY: Wiley.
Pleck, J. H. (2010). Paternal involvement: Revised conceptualization and theoretical linkages with child outcomes. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (5th ed., pp. 58–93). New York: Wiley.
Rane, T. R., & McBride, B. A. (2000). Identity theory as a guide to understanding fathers’ involvement with their children. Journal of Family Issues, 21(3), 347–366.
Rohner, R. P. (1998). Father love and child development: History and current evidence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7(5), 157–161.
Snider, J. B., Clements, A., & Vazsonyi, A. T. (2004). Late adolescent perceptions of parent religiosity and parenting practices. Family Process, 43(4), 489–502.
Stevenson, M. M., Fabricius, W. V., Cookston, J. T., Parke, R. D., Coltrane, S., Braver, S. L., & Saenz, D. S. (2014). Marital problems, maternal gatekeeping attitudes, and father–child relationships in adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1208–1218.
Sullivan, K. T. (2001). Understanding the relationship between religiosity and marriage: An investigation of the immediate and longitudinal effects of religiosity on newlywed couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 610–626.
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Cabrera, N. (1999). Perspectives on father involvement: Research and policy. Social Policy Report: Society for Research in Child Development, 13(1), 1–32.
Van Ryzin, M. J., & Leve, L. D. (2012). Validity evidence for the security scale as a measure of perceived attachment security in adolescence. Journal of adolescence, 35(2), 425–431.
Wenk, D., Hardesty, C. L., Morgan, C. S., & Blair, S. L. (1994). The influence of parental involvement on the well-being of sons and daughters. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56(1), 229–234.
Weyand, C., O’Laughlin, L., & Bennett, P. (2013). Dimensions of religiousness that influence parenting. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(3), 182–191.
Wilcox, W. B. (1998). Conservative protestant childrearing: Authoritarian or authoritative? American Sociological Review, 63, 796–809.
Wilcox, W. B. (2002). Religion, convention, and paternal involvement. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 780–792.
Yogman, M. W., Kindlon, D., & Earls, F. (1995). Father involvement and cognitive/behavioral outcomes of preterm infants. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 34, 58–66.
Zinnbauer, B. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2005). Religiousness and spirituality. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality. New York: Guilford Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lynn, M.G., Grych, J.H. & Fosco, G.M. Influences on Father Involvement: Testing for Unique Contributions of Religion. J Child Fam Stud 25, 3247–3259 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-016-0486-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-016-0486-6