Head Start & Nonresident Father Involvement

Background

The Head Start program has made an explicit commitment to enhancing fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives. However, these father involvement initiatives confront the challenges associated with rapidly transforming living arrangements of children. Fathers are increasingly less likely to be married to or reside with their child’s mother. These demographic changes have been especially apparent among the low-income families Head Start serves. As such, more than half of children who participate in Head Start do not live with their father. A growing body of work suggests that multiple forms of father involvement (both financial and social/emotional) promote child learning and development, potentially mitigating some of the disadvantages associated with poverty and single parenthood. Taken together, this suggests that fathers are a vital target for engagement by Head Start programs, and that gains in their involvement are likely to improve child outcomes. However, prior research has largelyfocused on mothers’ parenting and involvement with children.

 Methods

Using secondary data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, we examine the association between Head Start participation and non-resident father involvement. Fragile Families is a birth cohort study, representative of millennial urban births, and is particularly suited to this analysis, due to its oversampling of non-marital births and the rich data available on nonresident father involvement. The current study includes 1,486 families, of whom 236 participated in Head Start.

Outcomes of interest include the quantity (e.g. number of days seen) and quality (e.g. engagement in activities) of father involvement, as well as his material contributions (formal and informal cash and in-kind support) as reported by the mother at age 5.We also examine more proximal outcomes that could affect father involvement, specifically mother’s satisfaction with father’s parenting and discouragement of his involvement. We examine the association between Head Start participation and our outcomes of interest using multivariate OLS regressions and linear probability models; the distance the father lives from the child is tested as a moderator of the relationship. 

Results

Results indicate that Head Start participation is associated with increased father involvement but not material contributions at age 5. The distance the father lives from the child moderates this relationship, which is stronger among fathers who live close to their child. Evidence suggests that increased involvement may be facilitated through the mother. Head Start participation is associated with a better perception of the father by the mother, who is less likely to prevent the father from seeing the child.

Conclusion and Implications

These findings suggest that Head Start’s efforts to promote father involvement are sensitive to mothering and fathering contexts and reinforce the importance of working with both mothers and fathers in efforts to increase parents’ participation in their children’s lives with the ultimate goal of improving developmental outcomes among disadvantaged children.Future analyses will examine father reports of their own involvement and the long-term effects of Head Start on outcomes at ages 9 and 15.