The role of father involvement in the perceived psychological well-being of young adult daughters: A retrospective study.

As fathering research has progressed, it has become apparent that the associations with desirable child outcomes found in most research is actually with positive forms of paternal involvement, not simply involvement per se (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000; Flouri & Buchanan, 2003; Holmes & Huston, 2010; Pleck, 1997). In addition, while most fathering research has historically been taken from the perspective of fathers and mothers, researchers now recognize the potential importance of examining father involvement from the perspective of children themselves (Beckert, Strom, & Strom, 2006; Finley & Schwartz, 2004). In an effort to expand the conceptual understanding of father involvement and further refine the quantitative measurements of father involvement, Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine (1985) proposed a three-part typology of father involvement that included engagement, accessibility, and responsibility. Engagement includes a father's direct interaction with his child. Accessibility refers to a father's physical or psychological availability to his child. Responsibility involves providing for the care of the child, as distinct from the performance of care. Each of these types of involvement directly relate to a child's well-being. Engagement Sometimes referred to as interaction, Lamb et al. (1985) originally defined engagement as "a father's direct contact with his child, through caretaking and shared activities" (p. 884). Overall, positive paternal engagement, regardless of the way in which it has been measured, has been found to be significantly related to a cluster of adolescent outcomes, including alcohol use and abuse (Goncy & van Dulmen, 2010) and self-control, self-esteem, life skills, and social competence (Maine, 2004). Accessibility Accessibility refers to a father's potential availability for interaction, by virtue of being both physically and psychologically present and accessible to the child with or without direct interaction (Cabrera et al., 2000; Lamb et al., 1985; McBride, 1990; Pleck, 1997). Examples of accessibility may include such things as cooking in the kitchen while the child lingers nearby, being physically absent but easily accessible by phone or other electronic devices, or watching television together, but not directly interacting (Lamb, 2000). Averaging across several studies, Pleck found that fathers' proportional accessibility is about two-thirds of mothers', which is about 50% higher than the corresponding averages in the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers that have used the accessibility construct to measure involvement report that fathers spend more time being accessible to their children than they do engaging or being responsible (McBride & Mills, 1993; Pleck, 1997). Responsibility Responsibility is the hardest type of involvement to operationally define, but may be the most important type of involvement as it reflects the extent to which a father takes ultimate responsibility for the care and welfare of his child (Cabrera et al., 2000; Lamb, 2000). It also involves implementing strategies to meet certain needs, such as, selecting a pediatrician and making appointments, selecting child care-settings or arranging for babysitters, and making arrangements for care and nurturance for a child when they are sick (Cabrera et al., 2000; Lamb, 2000; Lamb et al., 1985; McBride, 1990). On average, fathers' share of responsibility is substantially lower than mothers' share (Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). In addition, researchers have yet to identify any child-care task for which fathers typically have primary responsibility (Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). Bradford, Hawkins, Palkovitz, Christiansen, and Day (2002) reported that in order to gain a more complete understanding of father involvement, future studies need to include children's reports. Gaining the perspective of the child is likely to yield important and somewhat different information that more fully captures the concept of father involvement (Beckert et al. …