Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, v.28, n.1/2, pp.77 Publication Date: 12-31-97 Noncustodial Fatherhood: Research Trends and Issues Author: Kissman, Kris SUMMARY. Research on non-custodial fathers is progressing from the negative effects of father absence to the development of successful models of co-parenting where absentee fathers share responsibilities for childrearing. Theoretically-based analyses of the obstacles and factors that promote father involvement need to be placed within the context of diverse families and interactions between biological parents living apart. Assessment of the impact of father presence on child well-being is especially important in light of the high proportion of children living in one-parent families without father Support and the high rate of poverty among children raised by mothers. The social science literature on noncustodial fatherhood has proliferated in the past few years, with terms used to describe these fathers as nonresident, absentee and undercover fathers. Growing interest in noncustodial parenthood is partly in response to changing family structure and the rapid increase in children raised in one-parent families, most often by mothers. Currently 27% of all children in the U.S. are raised in one-parent families and over one half of these children are poor (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995b). Changing family structure and the contemporary political climate encouraging family self-sufficiency have prompted investigations of what constitutes successful models of co-parenting where absentee fathers share responsibilities for child-rearing. Child support obligation of fathers, based on share of income devoted to children in two-parent families, has been estimated to equal 17% of fathers' income for one child and 25% for two children (Garfinkel et al., 1992). Yet, while $11.9 billion in child support was paid during 1991, $17.7 billion remains uncollected; and if court orders matched noncustodial fathers' ability to pay, the amount overdue in child support would be close to $50 billion in one year (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995a; Sorensen, 1995). Financial support of children is important in its own right and especially so in light of findings that fathers who provide financial and material support also tend to emotionally nurture and take active roles in caring for their children (Kissman & Shapiro, 1992). Whether separated, divorced, never-married, adolescent or older, noncustodial fathers of minor children experience various impediments to their involvement in the lives of their children. Failure to obtain employment to meet their children's financial needs constitutes one of the major obstacles to father involvement, especially for the high proportion of African American fathers who experience high rates of unemployment and underemployment (Hendricks, 1988). The greater the persistence of poverty, the less the involvement of fathers, so that children who need support the most are least likely to receive it (Harris & Marmer, 1996). Young fathers often do provide in-kind or material support such as food and clothing for their children when they cannot provide much financial support (Danziger & Radin, 1990). But lack of resources to carry out a provider role and other factors such as fathers' new family responsibilities decrease fathers' ability and/or willingness to carry out co-parental responsibilities (Furstenburg & Cherlin, 1991). Research on how fathers' financial and emotional support affects child well-being should be contextualized within a family systems framework that takes into account realities of diverse family forms, such as role taking and the external ecology in which families interact. Society's changing attitudes toward fatherhood, for example, will continue to impact fathers' perceptions of their roles and responsibilities. Exploration of how fathers perceive and carry out the role of parent, how available they are to their children and what responsibility they take for their care can be guided by theoretical frameworks that help assess multiple factors involved in role taking within families. In families where biological parents live apart, roles and responsibilities are bound to "deviate" from the traditional family model which has often been idealized as the preferred model from which diverse family forms are compared. The impact of parental relationships on father involvement is likely to differ in families, for example, where mothers facilitate or impede father visitation with children. Father/ child relationships in these families are contingent on the level of conflict in the parental dyad and whether fathers developed relationships with their children prior to a divorce. Post-divorce fathers visit their children more frequently than do fathers of children born outside marriage and father involvement is also likely to be affected by fathers forming new families and the length of time fathers have resided away from their children (Ahrons & Miller, 1993). THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS The process of developing successful models of co-parenthood where nonresident parents share responsibilities for childrearing requires identification of factors that influence paternal involvement and analyses of how these factors interact. Unemployment, for example, is likely to impact father's perception of his role as father, especially because fatherhood has traditionally been closely linked to the provider role. Similarly, how fathers perceive the impact of their involvement on their child's educational and psychological development and what they think is necessary to make contribution to their children's well-being are important areas of analysis (Child Trends, 1996). Fathers' perceptions of their roles and responsibilities are therefore likely to be influenced by economic resources (provider role) and how they perceive their impact on child well-being (caretaker role). Assessment of how these variables interact and how they impact frequency and quality of father visits and financial assistance to nonresident children can be guided by theoretical frameworks that explain how the meaning of roles impacts action (involvement). Symbolic interactionism formulated by Blumer (1969) provides a helpful framework for the conceptualization of the provider/caretaker roles in absentia. Blumer states that people act on the basis of the meaning various roles have for them and that meanings emerge through social interaction with others. Fathers' perceptions of their paternal roles can be conceptualized as contingent on their interaction with biological mothers of their children in that father/child interaction is positively impacted when biological parents maintain a functional level of cohesion (Esposito, 1995; Hoffman, 1995). Role taking in binuclear and two-parent families may not differ in this respect because parental cooperation is a requisite to all families carrying out their goals of support and socialization of children. Fathers' role perceptions have been found to change when they form new families and either live with biological children or stepchildren. The presence of these coresident children results in fathers reporting that fatherhood is increasingly more important to them and that they find parenting more manageable (Seltzer & Brandreth, 1994). It is not clear whether these changes in fathers' perception of parenthood, based on interactions with children in newly formed families, create stronger relationships between father and children from previous relationships. Increased responsibilities associated with new family formation may well offset potential benefits to the father/nonresident child relationship as resulting from fathers being exposed to parenting. Ahrons and Miller's (1993) finding that the longer fathers live away from their children, the less time they tend to spend with them may be partly a function of children's age; the older the child, the less time noncustodial fathers tend to spend with them. Conversely, older children have been found to be more affected by father presence than are younger children (Pruett, 1993; The National Center on Fathers and Fathering, 1996). Family systems theory helps frame the constellation of factors that impact how biological parents living apart carry out the goals of the family; nurturance and socialization of children. Diverse families interact within the context of changing societal norms about fatherhood. Both parents' perceptions of fathers' roles and responsibilities toward co-parenthood are changing as fathers are increasingly gaining and sharing custody of their children. As expectations of fathers' co-parental responsibilities increase, lack of involvement appears to be more a violation of social norms, even where the social context in which the family resides provides limited opportunities for fathers to carry out provider roles, and the provider role is inextricably linked to caretaking. As fathers increasingly gain custody of biological children society's changing perception of the role of fatherhood, including noncustodial fatherhood, is likely to impact the caregiver/provider role positively. Although fathers have been found to perceive parenthood as increasingly important as they are more exposed to parenting, and more manageable as they gain more experience with childrearing, simply engaging fathers in parental skills training and imparting to them knowledge about child development is not likely to be as effective in socializing males to the parenting role as is direct exposure to the parenting role. Less is known about to what extent guilt and self-blame hinder fathers' abilities to co-parent. Studies have found that non-custodial mothers often suffer debilitating guilt feelings after relinquishing custody of their children (West & Kissman, 1991). Along the same lines, research findings are unclear about how the presence of a stepfather in the child's home affects fathers' role perception and to what extent fathers tend to feel less obligated for their children's care where stepfathers are viewed as preempting the paternal role. Roles and responsibilities within the boundaries of diverse families are inextricably linked to the external context in which families interact, not only to stepfathers in the home but also the role of extended families and the world of work. The support of extended families, including grandfathers and other significant males, in support and socialization of children and fathers' abilities to provide for their children are among the multiple factors that are part of the external boundary of the one-parent family. The desirability of father involvement, notwithstanding, where family dynamics of abuse, indifference and numerous other pathological interactions abound, father involvement is often not possible or desirable. Nor should nonresident fathers be encouraged to be involved in the lives of children in order to rescue families headed by mothers from the "non-intact" or broken state into which they are often categorized (Walters et al., 1989). Although one-parent families are much more vulnerable to economic impoverishment than are two-parent families, the strength of these families in carrying out support and socialization of children is often minimized by negative comparison with idealized two-parent families and failure to control for economic status which accounts for some of the negative outcomes in child well-being and achievement. Cross-national comparisons, for example, indicate that child poverty is reduced to less than 3%, compared to over 20% in the U.S. in countries where income transfer, family policies and gender equality in wages are geared toward strengthening families (Males, 1996). NONCUSTODIAL FATHERS AND THE ONE-PARENT FAMILY Family systems theory provides a framework for conceptualization of families headed by mothers as interacting within the context of support, albeit often minimal support, from nonresident fathers and extended family. The role of extended family extends beyond the ability to nurture and to provide for children. Burton's (1996) findings that family norms about fatherhood are handed down multi-generationally have implications for research about extended family influences in socializing males to the fathering roles, particularly the identification of factors that facilitate intergenerational transmission of norms that promote co-parenthood and factors that inhibit paternal involvement. Minton and Pasley's (1996) qualitative data from matched pairs of mothers and fathers, for example, sheds light on how fathers' roles differ from that of mothers in that fathers generally come to see their roles as more associated with playful interaction with children rather than discipline or caregiving. Gender-based division of labor within families extends to other significant males in the child's life, including grandfathers who are more likely to engage in play with their children than are grandmothers who tend to assume caregiving roles, as reported by Radin et al. (1991). Male parental roles within families are often ambiguous but noncustodial fatherhood is even more complex, leaving many fathers unsure about what roles they are able to play in co-parenting their children (Minton & Pasley, 1996). Because information about noncustodial fathers is all too often obtained from mothers, further areas of research into noncustodial fatherhood should include matched samples of mothers and fathers to explore factors such as what fathers think is necessary to make contributions to their children's educational and psychological development (National Center on Fathers and Families, 1996). Securing information from both parents who live apart is particularly important because of incongruence in reports by mothers and fathers living apart where fathers have tended to rate higher their involvement in their children's lives after divorce than do mothers (Seltzer & Brandreth, 1994). Research on co-parental relationship as it affects child well-being is scarce and data is all too often obtained from mothers' perspective because fathers are difficult to locate and it is difficult to elicit information about family life from fathers (Furstenburg & Cherlin, 1991). Parental conflicts have been found to influence children's behavior in families where biological parents live apart. Contact with the nonresident parent, most often father, has been found to be associated with increased behavioral problems in boys when parental conflict was high (Ahrons & Miller, 1993). Along similar lines, Arditti and Kelly (1994) found that more positive relationships with ex-wives was the strongest predictor of fathers assuming co-parental responsibilities in terms of increased frequencies of visits and quality of the interaction between parent and child. The impact of father involvement on child well-being is also mitigated by parental conflict which has been found to have an adverse effect on child well-being, indicating the need for investigation of the quality of father involvement in children's lives (Cohen, 1995). Research on noncustodial father involvement has tended to be confined to post-divorced parental relationships. There is a dearth of research on the increasing number of never-married fathers who have been found to have an even lower level of involvement than do post-divorce fathers. FATHER INVOLVEMENT AND THE IMPACT ON MINOR CHILDREN The most compelling reason for gathering additional data on fathers and fathering is the impact of father involvement on child educational and psychological well-being (Child Trends, Inc., 1996). Studies of the impact of father presence on child well-being are scant, but frequency of father visits has been associated with higher academic achievement, self-esteem, social competence and overall well-being of children (Ahrons & Miller, 1993). The presence of fathers seems to be important for adolescent boys' development of initiative and industry, specifically in planning problem solving, building and exploring (Pruett, 1993; Belsky & Eggebeen, 1991). Father presence has been found to impact adolescent girls' delay of sexual activity (National Center on Fathers and Fathering, 1996). Although most recent studies agree that the socioeconomic status of the family impacts the development and behavior of young children more than does father absence, the importance of having two parents provide for material needs of the child reduces the probability that poverty will impact child well-being (Crockett et al., 1993; Wade, 1994). The findings that children who receive material and emotional support from fathers also tend to receive support from extended family and friends of the family (Kissman & Allen, 1993) point to the need for study of family interactions and norms that promote paternal support and support from extended family members, including other significant males. The benefits of male involvement on child well-being extend to grandfathers. Children whose grandfathers spend time with them have been found to score higher on child development scales, for example (Radin et al., 1991). Early childhood development and educational programs conceptualize male involvement as including fathers, grandfathers, uncles, friends and other men in the child's immediate environment (Comprehensive Child Development Project, 1996). Comprehensive services are provided by these programs to fathers, male extended family members and friends who are encouraged to develop skills to use in their own life as well as in childrearing. Program components are geared toward implementing changes deemed important to the development of nurturing males and include job training and placement, parental skills, understanding child development and parental responsibilities. The program's emphasis on providing essential services to create maximum involvement of males in the nurturing of children breaks down traditional polarization of work and family life. Males who need to develop skills in nurturing also need resources to provide nurturing. Father involvement must be perceived within the larger context of social inequality, and lack of resources that disproportionately affect diverse family forms and especially ethnic families. The special obstacles of male unemployment and underemployment, particularly in inner city communities, serve as powerful obstacles to male involvement as reported by Hendricks (1988), especially since provision of material resources has been linked to nurturing of children. According to Newman and Chauncy's (1995) work on job finding in inner city areas, an average of 14 people had applied for every job opening in the local McDonald's restaurant during a five-month period and 73% of those rejected for the jobs had not found work a year later. The National Jobs for All Coalition (1996) suggests that the true state of the national unemployment be determined by the Department of Labor by collection of data on the number, location and quality of job vacancies across the United States. Because the availability of economic resources is a powerful predictor of male involvement, income variations should receive as much attention as does age in social science research. However, current studies tend to emphasize age differences, adolescent and older fathers, more than differences based on income and marital status, never-married and post-divorced. Noncustodial fathers share similar obstacles and challenges across age, race and socioeconomic lines, although there are some unique aspects of race and ethnicity that should be emphasized. McAdoo (1988) and Peters (1988) have stressed the importance of African American fathers providing appropriate ethnic socialization of their children and sensitization to the negative consequences of ethnocentrism of others (Peters, 1988). CONCLUSION Successful models of co-parenthood where fathers share responsibilities for raising their children should be conceptualized within the context of one-parent families, most often headed by mothers. These families share many of the characteristics of the "traditional" two-parent families, such as varying gender role assignments where fathers tend to take less responsibility for childrearing than do mothers. The fact that male roles often differ from that of mothers in level and type of parenting is likely a function of different expectations and socialization processes because fathers are usually able to provide caregiving when they assume custody of their children. Findings that fathers spend less time in discipline and care, more time on playful interactions and rate higher the time spent with their nonresident children than do mothers may be related to traditional gender role assignment where nonresident father caregiving is rated as rather anomalous with subsequent inflation in value. Matched samples of fathers and mothers to assess the incongruence between perceptions of co-parental responsibilities have been difficult to obtain due to lack of access to nonresident fathers who tend to eschew opportunities to share information about family lives. Qualitative as well as quantitative data obtained through in-depth interviews would help determine both parents' views of the impact father involvement has on children's well-being and psychological development. Anecdotal data that augment information obtained through structured interview surveys can enable parents who live apart to fully share their stories about obstacles and facilitators to co-parenting. As fathers increasingly gain custody of their children, expectations of fathers' involvement in childrearing are likely to increase. Similarly, the presence of coresident children in reconstituted families represents increased opportunities for fathers to engage in parental roles which are nevertheless marked by a great deal of ambiguity, particularly for never married fathers who have not established close relationships with their children. While mothers often suffer from guilt and self-blame subsequent to relinquishing custody of their children, it is not clear to what extent such feelings play a part in fathers' inability to interact with their children. The quality of interactions between parents living apart has been found to be one of the best predictors of father involvement. Conflicting relation-ships between parents can have adverse results on child well-being in families where parents live apart as well as in two-parent families. Research studies that increasingly focus on how women "orchestrate" men's relation-ships with the children by scheduling/facilitating or preventing visitation by fathers have implications for how interventions such as conflict resolution skills can facilitate parental cooperation. Parental relationships are a key factor in successful co-parenting but fathers should not be perceived as rescuers of inadequate one-parent families. Nonresident fathers comprise important parts of support systems that strengthen the family's ability to support and socialize children. But in many mother-headed families, nonresident fathers are unable or unwilling to provide support and in cases where abuse and severe conflict have been part of the family history, support may not be desirable. The distinguishing feature of the one-parent family is that its support system has many forms, at times comprising extended family members and friends, surrogate fathers, grandfathers and other significant males rather than nonresident fathers. Extended families also play an important role in shaping intergenerational patterns of fatherhood in absentia, including expectations of what constitutes "good enough" fatherhood and handing down information such as child management skills and knowledge of child development. Nonresident father involvement should be assessed within the context of support and expectations of extended families' kinship and societal expectations as well as obstacles such as geographic distance between parents, fathers' new family responsibilities and presence of stepfather in the child's home that represent distinguishing characteristics of reconstituted and one-parent families. Members of diverse families interact within a societal context where changing expectations and norms about fatherhood impact family members' beliefs about what roles and responsibilities fathers have toward their children's care. These beliefs are then mitigated by fathers' means to carry out responsibilities of fatherhood and their views of what impact they have on their children's well-being, psychological and educational development. Research on noncustodial fathers is evolving toward identification of with-in-group variations based on income, age, and race. While fathers are increasingly being held responsible for providing for their children regardless of their relationships with mothers of their children or their new family responsibilities for new families, unemployed or underemployed fathers face special obstacles to carrying out the provider/caretaker role. Adolescent fathers and African American fathers are overrepresented in poverty statistics with scarce resources creating strong reliance on extended kinship networks, grandfathers, uncles and family friends as part of the male caregiver/provider system that provides bi-cultural socialization of children. Similarly, as investigations progress beyond the boundaries of post-divorced families toward how never-married biological parents interact to promote child well-being, marital status becomes an increasingly prominent factor in the development of successful models of co-parenthood. Theoretical frameworks such as family systems and symbolic interactions can help guide analyses of father role perceptions and societal changing expectations of father responsibilities as provider and caregiver of his children. 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