Session: Mothers's and Father's Contribution to Parenting and Child Outcomes: A Family Systems Approach (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

The theme of this symposium is to employ a family systems perspective to examine mothers' and fathers' contributions to parenting and child wellbeing. Our focus on Family Systems Theory fits well with the 2018 conference theme because it underscores the importance of including the whole family system—mother, father, and child—in basic and applied research to help vulnerable families achieve equal opportunity, equity, and justice. Furthermore, it fits well with social work intervention practice, which often involves working with families as systems. Family Systems Theory posits that families constitute interdependent subsystems—mother-father, mother-child, and father-child dyads—that exert mutual influence on each other. The theory argues for a broader consideration of children's development and wellbeing within the whole family system. To better understand these dynamic and transactional processes in low-income families, this symposium presents five complementary presentations that use a variety of quantitative methods. Specifically, the symposium introduces an intervention study, an observational study, and three secondary data analysis studies. All five studies use a family systems approach to examine fathers' and mothers' contributions to parenting and child wellbeing. In particular, the focus on fathers' parenting roles is necessary because the vast majority of the child welfare and family relations literature still focuses primarily on the mother-child relationship.

Paper #1: Longitudinal and Bidirectional Relations Between Coparenting Relationship Quality and Father Engagement Among Diverse Low-income Families

Paper #2: A Family Systems Approach to Examining Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting Warmth and the Development of Early Child Behavior Problems

Paper #3: A Longitudinal Analysis of Prenatal Risk and Resilience Factors Associated with Postnatal Parenting in Mothers and Fathers Exposed to Contextual Risk

Paper #4: Individual and Combined Effects of Parental Depression on Adolescent Well-Being

Paper #5: The Effects of the Dads Matter Intervention on Father Engagement and Involvement: Preliminary Findings

The first and second papers employ data from both mothers and fathers to examine parenting (i.e., coparenting, father involvement, paternal and maternal warmth) and children's behavioral outcomes (i.e., externalizing and internalizing problems). The third paper investigates associations of mothers' and fathers' prenatal mindfulness, psychopathology, and violence exposure to their postnatal mind-mindedness during laboratory-based parent-infant interactions. These three papers complement each other given their mutual focus on at-risk, low-income families with young children. The fourth paper examines the unique and combined effects of maternal and paternal depression on adolescents. Overall, the first four papers contribute to the methodological diversity (i.e., secondary data based on surveys, primary data based on observations) and representation of developmental timeline (i.e., prenatal, infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, and adolescence) of this symposium. The fifth paper demonstrates the positive effects of delivering a father engagement enhancement to home visitation services that have traditionally targeted mothers. This paper contributes to the symposium's methodological diversity by introducing a rigorous intervention evaluation method (i.e., randomized controlled trial of Dads Matter).