Paternal Classes and Externalizing Behaviors in African American Youth Living in Public Housing
Since its inception research on children and families living in public housing has focused exclusively on single mothers, adolescents and children. With few exceptions, this body of research has moved forward with the practical exclusion of fathers or a focus on the important role that fathers may play in the lives of their children. The near exclusion of fathers in public housing research is likely due to official housing data, which suggest that fathers are not present in these households. However, self-report data from children in public housing suggest that fathers are present in about one half of these households. An emerging body of research increasingly shows that fathers are critical to their children’s development. Unfortunately due to a lack of research on fathers in public housing, little is known about the impact of these fathers’ parenting practices. To help rectify this gap, we examine fathers’ behaviors (i.e., supervision and support) and its relationship to their adolescents’ substance use (i.e., marijuana, tobacco and alcohol), involvement in delinquent behaviors, and affiliation with deviant peers.
Method:
The current sample included 660 African American youth recruited from public housing developments in three large U.S. cities. Twenty five index cases were identified and then Respondent Driven Sampling was employed to recruit the sample. The primary analytic procedures were Latent Profile Analysis, to identify father types, a One-Way ANOVA to compare means across father types and a Discriminant Analysis (DA), to classify youth based on father typology and youths’ internalized behaviors.
Results:
On average, youth were 15.38 years old (SD = 2.4 years). Female and male participants were of equal age. Based on youths’ perceptions of their fathers’ supervision and support, the LPA model identified four father classes (i.e., high supervision / high support, n=149; high supervision / moderate support, n=306; moderate supervision / moderate support, n=99; and low-supervision / low-support, n=102). Each model is estimated using 50 random starts and 10 iterations. Overall, the four-class solution exhibits the best fit with respect to BIC values. The One-Way ANOVA results show significant differences in adolescents’ marijuana and tobacco use, involvement in delinquent behaviors, and affiliation with deviant peers; having fathers in the higher classes is associated with lower levels of externalizing behaviors. Results from the DA, indicate that youth can be successfully classified into father types by their substance use, delinquent behaviors and peer affiliates. Further, DA results indicate that youth were significantly differentiated based upon two discriminant functions (i.e., delinquent behavior; .809) and exposure to delinquent peers (.670 in function one; and alcohol [-.432], marijuana [-.394] and tobacco [-.343] use in function two). Results of this analysis suggest that father type plays a critical role in both classifying youth based on their internalized problem behaviors and their latent functioning.
Implications:
Father focused programs should be designed to promote greater paternal supervision and support. Further implications for policies and programs targeting youth in public housing will be discussed.