| Darlene Head-Reeves
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
African-American fathers: Exploring the pathways through which African-American fathers in two-parents families impact their children's development
Over three decades of scholarly inquiry suggest that fathers play an important role in promoting the health and wellbeing of infants and young children. While this research is founded on a strong empirical base, historically, it has been limited by small samples, observational methods, and largely middle-class European-American two-parent traditional families. Only recently have researchers undertaken larger-scale and nationally representative studies of diverse families and children (e.g., Fragile Families Study) and began to examine notions of fathering, and levels, contexts, and consequences of father involvement for children in minority and diverse socioeconomic contexts. Also, current research has examined father relationships will full-term healthy infants while comparatively less is known about father relationships of minority and low-income fathers and low birth weight children. Thus, while the extant research base suggests that fathers play important roles in children's development, the research on which to base this assertion for African-American fathers and their children and among low birth weight infants is less certain.
The proposed research study attempts to address these limitations while also accounting for the multidimensional nature of fathering and its effects by positing a conceptual model of fathering and the pathways through which various dimensions of fathering impact young children's cognitive and socio-emotional development among African-American families with both normal and low birth weight infants. This study will extend previous research through 1) the use of a nationally representative sample of children born in 2001 from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort; 2) drawing from systems and transactional theories of development, which underscore the interplay of multiple domains in contributing to children's optimal development; 3) examining two-parent African-American families rather than families with nonresidential fathers; and 4) examining the proposed model across birth weight categories.
Back to Funded Dissertation Grants Page |