Racially and Ethnically Diverse Fathers: Shared Parental Responsiveness with Mothers and Early Child Outcomes in Families with Low Income

Background and Purpose: Racially and ethnically diverse fathers and mothers, especially those from low-income contexts, have been historically underrepresented in research and studied from a deficit lens (i.e., focus on poor parenting). There is a critical need to adopt a strength-based perspective and examine the positive parenting of such parents. Indeed, emerging evidence demonstrates that racially and ethnically diverse fathers and mothers from low-income contexts engage in positive parenting behaviors such as parental responsiveness—prompt and warm parenting reactions—that then contributes to their young children’s healthy development. What is less known is how such fathers and mothers work as a family system to develop a shared sense of parental responsiveness that then benefits their young children’s behavioral, socioemotional, and cognitive development. Informed by the family system theory, the current study addressed the following research question: What are the associations between father-mother shared parental responsiveness and preschoolers’ developmental outcomes, especially in racially and ethnically diverse families living with low income? We hypothesized that father-mother shared parental responsiveness would be associated with preschoolers’ lower levels of behavior problems, higher levels of prosocial behaviors, and higher levels of cognitive abilities. We also explored fathers’ resident status with the mothers and children as a moderator with no specific hypothesis, given mixed findings in the literature.

Methods: Participants were from the Building Strong Families project (N = 1,173), a sample of racially and ethnically diverse (52.27% Black, 19.89% White, 17.91% Latinx, and 10.03% Other) father-mother families with preschoolers, living with low income, and recruited across eight locations in the United States. Fathers’ and mothers’ parental responsiveness were observed during father-child and mother-child interactions using the two-bags task. Preschoolers’ behavior problems, prosocial behaviors, and cognitive abilities were assessed using the Behavioral Problem Index, Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scale’s Social Interaction subscale, and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, respectively. A common fate dyadic approach to Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to create a shared parental responsiveness latent variable and an individual residual variance latent variable. Child outcomes were then regressed onto these two latent variables. Moderation analysis by fathers’ resident status was conducted.

Results: The SEM model had good fit, RMSEA = 0.00, CFI = 1.00, SRMR = 0.01. Father-mother shared parental responsiveness positively predicted preschoolers’ prosocial behaviors (b = 0.33, SE = 0.06, p < .001) and cognitive abilities (b = 14.85, SE = 2.23, p = .087), above and beyond parents’ individual residual variance. However, shared parental responsiveness did not predict child behavior problems (b = -0.05, SE = 0.03, p = .088). Further, fathers’ resident status did not moderate any of the examined relationships.

Conclusion and Implications: Shared parental responsiveness was linked with higher levels of preschoolers’ prosocial behaviors and cognitive abilities. These results suggest that there may be benefits to young children’s development when racially and ethnically diverse fathers from low-income contexts work with mothers to develop a shared sense of parental responsiveness. Interventions serving such fathers and families could help strengthen father-mother shared parental responsiveness to promote healthy child development.