The two studies of this dissertation examined mothers' perspectives of
nonresident fathers' involvement in low-income families. The overall goal of these
studies was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of nonresident fathers'
involvement and its effect on family well-being.
In the first study I applied a relatively new methodology, zero-inflated
negative binomial regression, to overcome the methodological shortcomings of
previous studies. The models (N=1215) examined what factors predicted two
aspects, presence and level, of father-child contact and paternal engagement.
Different factors were found to influence presence of father-child contact and
frequency of contact. Similarly, different factors predicted presence of paternal
engagement and level of engagement. Thus, a nonresident father's decision to be
involved in his child's life may be a fundamentally different decision than how
much he is involved.
In addition, parents' positive relationship--romantic relationship and
higher quality of relationship--was found to be the major predictor influencing all
outcome variables. It appears that a positive co-parental relationship is central to
nonresident father involvement.
In my second study, I qualitatively examined rural mothers' perceptions of
nonresident fathers' involvement (N=83). Specifically, I investigated whether
mothers are really "gatekeeping" the father involvement, as suggested by previous
research. There was no simple yes/no answer to this question, rather, results
suggested that whether a mother acts as a gatekeeper of her children depends on
her unique circumstances. Mothers, by at large, wanted the nonresident fathers to
be involved in their children's lives and to perform responsible fathering, but
mothers' expectations of the fathers' roles may be narrowly defined and, therefore,
easily violated. Some mothers did intentionally refuse or limit father-child contact
in cases where they believed that father involvement would threaten the safety of
their children. In these cases, "gatekeeping" behavior can be viewed as one
survival strategy for the mothers.
The two studies presented here collectively demonstrate the complexity of
non-resident father's involvement and provide insight that will be useful for policy
targeted to low-income families. / Graduation date: 2005
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/29935 |
| Date | 10 December 2004 |
| Creators | Sano, Yoshie |
| Contributors | Acock, Alan C., Richards, Leslie N. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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