Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Positive Father-Child Interaction: Children's, Fathers', And Mothers' Contributions, Erin K. Holmes, Aletha C. Huston

Faculty Publications

Guided by a systemic ecological framework for father involvement, we investigate children's, mothers', and fathers' contributions to observed father-child interaction. Analyses of 586 married resident fathers, their wives, and a target first-grade child (participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care) demonstrate that an additive model of father involvement accounts for the quality of father-child interaction better than a model which focuses on only one component of the system. Father parenting beliefs, child language skills, child social skills, maternal employment, and dyadic mother-child interaction quality each additively and significantly contribute to positive father-child interaction. Father average income and education …