Fathers' Involvement and Maternal Parenting Stress at Early Childhood in Fragile Families

Background/Purpose: Fathers’ active participation in child rearing practice is beneficial to the well-being of mothers and children (King & Sobolewski, 2006; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). However, few studies have examined the association between fathers’ involvement and maternal parenting stress at early childhood from a longitudinal perspective. Also, the findings regarding the relationship between children’s growth and maternal parenting stress are mixed in previous studies (Berryhill & Durtschi, 2016; Crnic, Gaze, & Hoffman, 2005). This study aims to examine the relationship between fathers’ involvement and maternal parenting stress, and maternal parenting stress trajectories in the first five years of child’s life. The hypotheses are that (1) maternal parenting stress is negatively associated with fathers’ involvement, and (2) maternal parenting stress decreases through children's birth to five years of age.

Methods: This study used the Fragile Family and Child Wellbeing Study which is following a cohort of children born between 1998 and 2000 in large U.S. cities. The sample of this study includes baseline and three waves of child age at 1-year, 3-years, and 5-years old , and each wave includes 964 children. The maternal parenting stress scale was a 4-point scale (1= strongly disagree and 4= strongly agree) with four items. Fathers’ involvement included singing songs or nursery rhymes, reading stories, telling stories, and playing inside with the child, with a frequency ranged from zero to seven days per week. Maternal race, education, age, income, and children’s gender, birth weight, and age were treated as covariates. STATA 14 was used to conduct univariate analysis and multi-level modeling, including fixed-effects and random-effects models. The Interclass Correlation was .540, and the likelihood ratio test was significant. No assumptions were violated.

Results: The majority of mothers were people of color, including Black (48.18%), Hispanic (32.26%), and other race (2.29%). Mothers’ average age at the birth of the child was 24.17 (SD = 5.50); the average income at birth was $ 2011.81 per year (SD = 7412.59), and most of the mothers (97.09%) did not have college degrees. A total of 50.62% children were girls, and 9.50% children had low birth weights. The average maternal parenting stress was 2.16 of 4 (SD = .67), while the average days of fathers’ involvement were 3.23 (SD = 1.98) days per week. Fathers’ involvement (β= - .037, p < .001) was negatively associated with maternal parenting stress. African-American mothers (β= .106, p = .003) had more maternal parenting stress compared to other races. Mothers who had less than high school education (β = .151, p< .001) had higher maternal parenting stress. Children’s age was not significantly associated with maternal parenting stress.

Conclusions/Implications: The results indicated that fathers’ involvement decreased maternal parenting stress, but maternal parenting stress was stable from the developmental ages of birth to five. This finding highlights the importance of fathers’ involvement in child rearing practice during children’s early ages, especially in people of color and lower-education families. The study implies that social workers should provide more father-focused services and foster fathers’ engagement in fragile families.