How Important Is Fatherhood?: A Latent Class Analysis of Fathers and Child Well-Being

Background and Purpose: Fatherhood initiatives have proliferated in the last 20 years (Cabrera et al., 2004) with a growing body of knowledge on father involvement. Prior meta-analyses examining non-resident fathers’ impact on child well-being (Adamsons & Johnson, 2013; Amato & Gilbreath, 1999) identified five variables influencing type of fathers:  financial support provided, contact with children, closeness of relationship, parenting style, and quality of activities between father and children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being (FF; Reichman et al., 2001) study, a nationally representative longitudinal study, the following Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was based on the previous studies of the types of non-resident fathers and their association with long-term child well-being outcomes. 

Methods: Data from the FF study were collected in waves at birth, and then at one, three, five, and nine years using telephone, in-person, and fieldwork interviews with mothers, fathers, and children. A stratified random sample methodology was obtained from US cities with populations over 200,000. As identified in prior meta-analyses, frequency of contact, level of financial support, quality of contact, and parenting style were used as indicators of types of fathers. Child well-being at year nine was determined through delinquency reports, child behaviors and emotions, task-completion scale, peer-bullying reports, father-child relationship, and child self-report of health. Child well-being outcomes were predicted through ANCOVA using maternal household income to control for socio-economic status.

Results: From the sample of non-resident fathers, LCA resulted in a three-class solution (AIC=100147.98, BIC=100415.47, Entropy=.834, LMR=2907.61, p<.0001) using variables important to fatherhood types: absentee (Class 1, n=526, 16.3%), traditional non-resident (Class 2, n=1502, 46.5%), and high-quality/low-income fathers (Class 3, n=1199, 37.2%). Absentee fathers (Class 1) reportedly had little or poor involvement with the child while providing higher levels of financial support. Traditional, non-resident fathers (Class 2) had the highest contact and involvement levels of moderate quality, though were most likely to use corporal punishment. High quality and low-income fathers (Class 3) reported low frequency yet high quality involvement. Financial support was low and use of corporal punishment moderate among this class. For child well-being outcomes, significant differences were found between father class and the lower quality of long-term relationship with the father (F=15.80, df=2, 2001, p<.001), exhibiting problems with delinquency (F=6.46, df=2, 2313, p=.002), and reporting of internalized emotional problems (F=3.09, df=2, 2335, p=.046) even after control for maternal SES. In each case, children with fathers in Class 1 reported significantly worse long-term outcomes than the other two classes of fathers with Class 2 also demonstrating worse child well-being outcomes than those in Class 3. No significant differences existed with the other factors.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings indicate that absentee fathers have an adverse effect on outcomes of child well-being. The differing results between traditional non-resident fathers and father with high quality contact demonstrate that quality of contact may be more important than the frequency. Social workers should work to include fathers in high quality contact with their children to build healthy relationships and improve child well-being outcomes.