The Sting of Disappointment: Father-Daughter Relationships in Low-Income African American Families

This study examines the role and influence of fathers and father figures in the lives of African American adolescent girls (N=302) from a representative sample of poor and low-income families. Sixty five percent of the adolescents identified a primary father, of whom two-thirds were biological fathers and one-third were father figures. Adolescent girls reported more contentious and less close relationships with biological fathers than with father figures. Multivariate regression analyses indicated that fathers’ emotional disengagement predicted greater depressive symptomatology and behavioral problems for adolescents, while fathers’ level of positive engagement was not predictive of youth outcomes. Moreover, fathers’ emotional and physical disengagement had an additive detrimental link with adolescent functioning, with the most problematic emotional and behavioral functioning apparent in girls whose fathers were both emotionally alienated and physically absent from their lives. Father-Daughter Relationships 3 The Sting of Disappointment: Father-Daughter Relationships in Low-Income African American Families Introduction Although recent years have seen a substantial increase in research on the role and influence of fathers in children's lives, many gaps remain. In particular, little is known about nonresidential fathers, especially never-married men, and father figures, that is men who are not biological fathers yet play a father-like role to children. For African American children, 80% of whom will spend at least a portion of their childhood without a residential father (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999), this dearth of knowledge is particularly striking. Moreover, most research on African American children has not addressed the psychological and relational aspects of fathers' roles in family life (Coley, in press). In this study, we take a fine-grained look at the role of fathers and father figures in the lives of African American female adolescents. Recent scholarship has called for greater attention to the oftenignored relationship of African American girls and their fathers, noting the centrality of this relationship to girls’ growing conceptions of themselves as individuals and as partners in future romantic relationships (Barras, 2000; Way & Gillman, 2000; Way & Stauber, 1996). In particular, we consider how girls themselves identify and define their primary father and their psychological attachment to him, focusing on the constructs of trust and communication, and anger and alienation in the parent-child relationship. We embed this analysis in the context of families' lives, considering the impact of individual, family, and household characteristics. Conceptualizing Fathering in Low-Income African American Families The vast majority of research on fathers and children focuses on married, middle-class, and European American samples (Coley, in press). While low-income and nonresidential fathers are receiving an increasing amount of attention from policy makers and the public on issues such as welfare receipt, nonmarital childbearing, and child support, research attention has lagged behind (TamisLeMonda & Cabrera, 1999). Beyond fathers’ residential status and financial contributions, little is known Father-Daughter Relationships 4 about how low-income and nonresidential men parent, or about how their behaviors and family connectedness affect child development (Coley, in press). Moreover, theorists are increasingly vocal concerning the need to attend to the social, cultural, and ethnic contexts within which families function, and to embed child development research in a richer contextual fabric (Coltrane & Parke, 1998; McAdoo, 1993). Most of the prior research on nonresidential fathers and their children has focused predominantly on child support payments and visitation frequency, making this warning particularly relevant. As Cabrera and her colleagues (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000) stated in a recent paper on fatherhood scholarship in the 21 century, "Theoretical models of parenting must be reformulated to accommodate new family structures as well as culturally diverse conceptions of fatherhood" (p.129). Research on African Americans has attended to such issues with more frequency than other family literatures. A history of scholarly work on African American family life has noted the importance of the social and economic environment, as well as long-standing cultural traditions, in shaping the patterns and practices of childbearing, marriage, and parenting within African American families in the U.S. (Billingsley, 1968; Chase-Lansdale, Brooks-Gunn, & Zamsky, 1994; Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1999; Edin, 2000; Furstenberg, 1995; Gadsden, 1999; Jarrett, 1994; McAdoo, 1993; McLoyd, 1990; Patterson, 1998; Spencer & Depree, 1996; Stack, 1975; Stier & Tienda, 1993; Sullivan, 1993; Taylor, Jackson, & Chatters, 1997; Wilson, 1987, 1996). The importance of extended family or additional household members who play a familial role has also been an important thread throughout literature on African American families. While more recent research has questioned earlier claims that low-income African American families have more extensive social support networks and deeper kin ties than European Americans and other family types (Amato, 1995; Billingsley, 1992; Gadsden, 1999; Stack, 1975), nonetheless, extended family and fictive kin appear to hold a significant role in African American families. Given the twin histories of extensive kin support and the prevalence of single-mother households, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that father Father-Daughter Relationships 5 figures may provide an especially important source of support for African American children (Black, Dubowitz, & Starr, 1999; Coley, 1998; Jayakody & Kalil, 2000). The Presence of Fathers in Low-Income, African American Families Rates of nonmarital births hover around 32% for all American children, and they are substantially higher, close to 70%, in the African American community (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). When one includes the divorce rate, which remains at about 50% over the life course, demographic patterns indicate that about one half of European American children and 80% of African American children will spend at least a portion of their childhood in a single-parent household, typically headed by a mother (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). These numbers indicate that a majority of African American fathers are not engaged in the traditional married parenting role. Yet, contrary to the rather dire picture painted by such statistics, numerous studies indicate that many low-income African American children and youth from single mother households maintain relationships with either biological fathers or father figures. Nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) in the 1980's indicate that about one half of nonresidential African American fathers of young children visit their children regularly and provide financial support (Lerman, 1993). Similar findings have been reported in smaller samples of low-income African American fathers (Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1999; Stier & Tienda, 1993; Sullivan, 1993). Limited data on low-income African American adolescents indicate lower rates of father involvement, with about one third of fathers remaining involved with their adolescent children (Furstenberg & Harris, 1993). Moreover, unmarried African American men have been found to be more involved with their children than their counterparts from other racial and ethnic groups (Lerman, 1993; Seltzer, 1991; Stier & Tienda, 1993). Coley has proposed that this pattern may be due to a stronger shared cultural understanding of the role and responsibilities of unmarried and nonresidential fathers in the African American community, linked to the prevalence of single mother families in this group (Coley, in press). Father-Daughter Relationships 6 In addition to their relationships with biological fathers, a significant minority of children in single mother households appear to have access to an alternative father figure. In two recent studies of low-income African American families with preschool age children, one third to one half of mothers reported a father figure who was involved with their child, the majority of whom were maternal partners (Black, Dubowitz & Starr, 1999; Jayakody & Kalil, 2000). Slightly lower rates of father figure-child relationships, around 25%, have been reported by school-age children (Coley, 1998) and adolescents (Furstenberg & Harris, 1993). Fathers' Influence on Adolescent Psychological and Behavioral Functioning These data indicate that a significant proportion of African American children and adolescents from unmarried mother households appear to have access to a biological father or father figure. However, knowing about a father’s availability tells us little about his influence on his child’s healthy functioning. Numerous theoretical models have been proposed for how fathers might influence child development. Lamb (1997) focuses on the tripartite structure of paternal engagement (direct contact), accessibility (presence and availability), and responsibility (financial support, organizational support), while Amato (1998) has similarly proposed four modes of influence through direct and indirect social capital, human capital, and financial capital. In this paper, we will focus primarily on the impact of fathers' involvement and the quality of their relationships with children, that is the social capital that they provide through their engagement and accessibility. In a recent review of literature on nonresidential fathers, Amato and Gilbreth (1999) proposed emotional closeness, authoritative parenting practices (high levels of warmth combined with firm and consistent limit-setting and discipline), and economic support as the ce