The purpose of this study was to examine to the contribution of fathers' involvement in family leisure to aspects of family functioning. The sample consisted of 647 families of fathers and a youth from throughout the United States. The Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP) was used to measure family leisure involvement. FACES II was used to measure family functioning. Results from the father and youth perspective indicated significant relationships between father involvement in both core and balance family leisure to various aspects of family functioning. Core family leisure involvement was the only family leisure involvement variable related to family adaptability from the youth perspective. From both the father and youth perspective, core family leisure satisfaction was the single strongest predictor of all aspects of family functioning. Findings provide implications for fathers, families, scholars, professionals, and policy makers.

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There has been an increase in the fatherhood studies with minority groups in the United States in the past decades; however, these studies rarely included Turkish American fathers. To the best of the authors knowledge, current study was the first to explore father involvement in relation to fathers' perception of mothers' gate-keeping, fathers' competence as a parent, and their cultural stance as related to conservatism among a sample of Turkish American fathers with children between the ages of 3 to 6 years (n = 103). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine the factor loadings of gate-closing and gate-opening items. The results yielded a two-factor solution with one suppressed item, and two cross-loading items with factor loadings bigger than .32. A path analysis was conducted to determine whether father's competence in relation to gate-closing and gate-opening, and father's conservatism adequately described father involvement through regression paths. The results of the chi-square goodness-of-fit test were not significant, χ2(3) = 1.84, p = .607, suggesting that the model fit the data well. Father's competency significantly predicted father involvement (B = 0.56, SE = .211, p = .008). Gate-closing (B = -30.48, SE = 15.340, p = .047) and gate-opening (B = 1.20, SE = .298, p < .001) significantly predicted father involvement. Gate-closing partially mediated the relationship between father's competency and father involvement (B = 0.11, SE = .063, p = .004) while gate-opening didn't yield mediation. And finally, conservatism did not significantly predict father involvement (B = -0.09, SE = -1.11, p = .266). The results suggest that with Turkish American fathers, competency, gate-closing and gate-opening are good predictors of father involvement, while conservatism is not a good predictor in this current study.

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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects that a man's attitudes towards fathering have on the level of involvement with his children. Of particular interest was whether fathering attitudes moderated some of the more consistent predictors of involvement, such as relationship quality, maternal gatekeeping, mother's and father's employment hours, a man's history with his own father, family structure, and child characteristics. A sample of 2300 men was used to evaluate the effects of fathering attitudes on engagement and warmth among children ages 2 to 8 and 9 to 11. Results indicate an inconsistent main effect between fathering attitudes and the types of involvement among the two age groups. However, moderated multiple regression analysis revealed that, in many instances, fathering attitudes completely mitigated the effect of several of the traditional predictors of involvement. Among the younger group, men with high fathering attitudes maintained high levels of engagement despite poor history with their own father and high levels of work hours, and engagement increased as maternal employment hours increased. Warmth among these men also remained unchanged at high levels of maternal gatekeeping and low levels of relationship quality. In the older group, high father attitudes mitigated the effects of relationship quality and fathers' work hours on warmth. Attitudes did not moderate engagement among the older group.

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This study examined how the longitudinal associations among children’s negative emotionality, mothers’ depressive symptoms, parental warmth, and children’s school readiness and whether the associations vary as a function of fathers’ positive involvement in low-income South Korean families. Participants were 399 families including mothers (Mage = 32.54 years at Time 1), fathers (Mage = 35.23 years at Time 1), and children (Mage = 38.92 months at Time 1; 50.5% boys) in the Panel Study on Korean Children. Results revealed that children’s negative emotionality was indirectly associated with their school readiness three years later, through its association with mothers’ depressive symptoms and warmth. Mothers’ warmth mediated the association between mothers’ depressive symptoms and children’s school readiness, and fathers’ warmth mediated the association between fathers’ positive involvement and children’s school readiness. Our findings revealed the family processes underlying children’s school readiness development in low-income Korean family contexts. Our findings also provide information useful for efforts to detect family risks and to establish family policies to promote low-income children’s school readiness.

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The present study examined how acculturation, mental health problems, and parenting stress are associated with two dimensions of father involvement longitudinally for Latino and Chinese immigrant fathers using a nationally representative sample of young children and their resident fathers from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). After controlling for a variety of individual and demographic characteristics and previous levels of father involvement, results from multiple group structural equation modeling revealed that immigrant fathers' English proficiency is negatively associated with care-taking involvement at 2 years, but positively associated with care-taking involvement at 4 years. Interestingly, mothers' English proficiency is also positively associated with fathers' care-taking involvement at 2 years. In addition, fathers' US citizenship is positively associated with care-taking involvement at 2 years. Finally, mothers' US citizenship is negatively associated with fathers' literacy or language involvement at 2 years. In contrast with the hypotheses, no significant differences between Latino and Chinese immigrant fathers were found. Findings suggest that some dimensions of acculturation affect different dimensions of father involvement across different groups of immigrants, and the impacts may remain significant even four years after the child birth.