Profiles of Father Involvement Among Unmarried Black Fathers and Child Social-Emotional Functioning

Background: Although Black fathers often encounter various challenges such as limited financial resources, societal stereotypes, and systemic barriers, their unique parenting strengths and ways of engaging with their children may contribute to their children’s healthy social-emotional functioning. A better understanding of the contributions of distinct father involvement patterns to child social-emotional functioning can inform the development of tailored interventions to promote father involvement and optimal child social-emotional functioning in this population. The present study aimed to explore patterns of father involvement among unmarried Black fathers with low income and examine how different father involvement patterns are associated with preschoolers’ social-emotional functioning, including empathy, emotional security, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Methods: Data were from the Building Strong Families (BSF) project—a multi-site program that offered relationship skills education to unmarried couples who were expecting a child or recently had a child. Our analytic sample included families where fathers identified as non-Hispanic Black (n = 2,040). We used fathers’ and mothers’ reports of father involvement at the 15-month follow-up to assess fathers’ accessibility (2 items); responsibility in the form of financial support (1 item); engagement in social and cognitive play (5 items); and engagement in caregiving (3 items). We used mothers’ reports of child social-emotional functioning at the 36-month follow-up to assess child empathy, emotional security, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Covariates, including child sex, mothers’ and fathers’ education levels, psychological distress, and income, were obtained at baseline. To address the study aim, we conducted a Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), using Mplus v.8.6.

Results: Latent profile analysis revealed four father involvement profiles: 1) high involvement (50.60%), 2) highly engaged, but low cognitive stimulation (25.49%), 3) moderate involvement (18.09%), and 4) non-resident, very low involvement (3.82%). Children of highly involved Black fathers exhibited optimal social-emotional functioning compared to children of fathers in the other profiles. children in the highly engaged, but low cognitive stimulation profile showed the least favorable social-emotional functioning outcomes, followed by children in the non-resident, very low involvement profile.

Conclusion: Notably, over a half of fathers in the study showed the high involvement profile, demonstrating Black fathers’ strengths and resilience as a parent, despite low-income levels and other potential structural barriers and challenges, such as systemic racism and limited access to resources. Regarding the connection between father involvement patterns and children’s social-emotional functioning, our findings highlight the value and power of active, positive involvement of Black fathers in the lives of their preschoolers living in low-income contexts. Our findings also have implications for supporting Black fathers’ engagement in cognitively and socially stimulating activities for the benefit of their children’s socioemotional functioning. Finally, our results point to both practice and policy needs to prioritize non-resident Black fathers and their children through targeted efforts and services.