Non-Resident Father Involvement and Adolescent Wellbeing within the Context of Economic Hardship: An Application of the Family Stress Model

Background/Purpose: The Family Stress Model (FSM; Conger, et al., 2000), explains how economic hardship (EH) affects parents’ and adolescents’ functioning among White, intact, and rural families. In an attempt to democratize knowledge, this study applies the FSM to a population in need of research attention, urban, racially/ethnically diverse, at-risk families. This study’s purpose is to examine whether non-resident father involvement (NR FI) and co-parenting mediates the relations between paternal economic hardship (PEH) and adolescent mental health (MH) (anxiety/depression) and resilience. Hypotheses: (a) increased PEH (child age 5;Y5) predicts decreased NR FI and co-parenting support at Year 9 (Y9) leading to increased adolescent MH problems and decreased adolescent resilience at Year 15 (Y15); (b) increased co-parenting support (Y9) is associated with increased NR FI (Y9).

Methods: Data was drawn from Years 5, 9, and 15 of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Inclusion criteria were families with a non-resident father who was alive at each wave (N = 1,267). On average, fathers were 27, and mothers were 35, years old (Y5). Fathers identified as Black (65.9%), Latino (19.7%), White (11.5%), and “other” (2.7%). PEH was measured by father responses to the SIPP (Reichman, 2001). The latent NR FI variable was measured as father-child closeness (child report) and father engagement (mother and father report) based off survey items targeting these constructs. Co-parenting was constructed from mother and father responses to survey items targeting co-parenting behaviors. Adolescent resilience was measured using adolescent reports on the EPOCH (Kern et al., 2016). Adolescent internalizing/externalizing problems were treated as observed variables from Y15 reports (mother) on the CBCL/6-18 (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test hypotheses.

Results: The model fit was good: scaled c² (457, p < .001) = 762.63.21, c² (457, p < .001) = 796.39 scaled CFI = .96, scaled RMSEA = .03, and SRMR = .05. Increased PEH predicted lower co-parenting scores. No FI variables predicted adolescent outcomes. Maternal EH predicted worse adolescent MH problems. Higher levels of mother engagement (Y9) predicted higher levels of resilience. Co-parenting was positively associated with all three NR FI constructs.

Conclusions and Implications: Results suggest that supportive co-parenting and eradicating household poverty are important to the long-term wellbeing of adolescents by reducing MH problems and increasing resilience. Further, results show that concepts from FSM can be used to study not only adolescent maladjustment of primarily White adolescents from intact families, but also to better understand resilience of racially/ethnically diverse, urban, and poor adolescents from NR father families. We have a limited understanding of adolescent resilience, especially among at-risk/vulnerable youth. Despite the many risk factors youth experienced in this study, they exhibited high levels of resilience. If we are to build youth resiliency, we need to know more about the factors that are within and external to the family that affect the likelihood that youth will persevere when faced with adversity. This secondary analysis can be used to inform future research to build resilient youth and families in the decades to come.