The Combined Influence of Depression & Masculinity on Father Involvement

Background: Father involvement is known to be a key predictor of children’s emotional and mental health, as well as their functioning as healthy members of society later in life. However, little research has addressed the predictors of father involvement. More specifically, prior research has failed to account for issues, such as mental health, to understand what facilitates greater paternal involvement with children. For example, compared to non-depressed fathers, depressed fathers may be less present in their child’s life, less playful with their children, focus more on their experience as a parent not their influence on child experiences, and use language that denotes negative and critical attitudes toward children. Complicating matters, however, is the impact of adherence to masculine norms among men. This is significant because conformity to masculine norms is associated with depressive symptomology and expression. Our paper addresses this hole by looking at the combined effects of depression and masculine norm adherence on four measures of father involvement among adolescents.

Method: Data came from a sample of residential biological and non-biological fathers with children aged 9 to 18 in the Survey of Contemporary Fatherhood (n=1001). Four constructs, utilizing Pleck’s model of father involvement were used: warmth, availability, engagement, and monitoring. The key independent variables were depression, as measured by the CES-D scale (α= 0.91) and the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-22 (α= 0.88). Controls included race, relationship status, paternal age, child age, child gender, educational attainment, and employment status were included in the model. Because of our interest in the moderating relationship of depression and masculinity, we used OLS regression to analyze the data.

Results: Masculinity and depression present unique and important influences on father involvement. Masculinity had a negative effect on warmth (b= -.192, p<.001), monitoring (b= -.094, p<.05), and availability (b=-.171, p<.05). It also positively effected engagement (b= .488, p<.001). Depression followed a similar pattern. Interactive models indicated that men with low masculine norm adherence became less warm with higher depression scores, while depression had no effect on highly masculine men. Similar patterns were observed for monitoring and availability. However, engagement followed a different pattern, as highly masculine men became more engaged with increased depression scores.

Implications: Men who adhered to strong masculine norms were less likely to engage in emotional parenting. Similarly, men with low masculine norm adherence and high levels of depression did not engage in emotional parenting. Engagement, however, followed a pattern that suggested these men were “box checking” actions that required a father to be physically present, but not emotionally present, like eating dinner with a child, gong to religious services, and caring for physical needs. Fathering programs should not only address parenting skills, but also the mental health of the parent. Our study also provides new insights into what to expect when a father with low or average masculinity become progressively depressed, or men that are more traditionally masculine in how they parent normally and depressed.