Very little is known about the lives of adolescent fathers and less is known about their relationship with their children. From a developmental perspective, these 'youngest parents' (Coles, et al., 1997) are compromised, conflicted and disadvantaged in their capacities and skills to care for their children. This study attempted to deepen our understanding of the bond between the adolescent father and his child The theoretical foundation for this study emerges from the question: What intrinsic factors motivate and contribute to the adolescent father's involvement with his child? The conceptual underpinning for this rests on the basic psychoanalytic and psychodynamic processes of internalization and identification, i.e., those traits, behaviors, thoughts, feelings and attitudes incorporated into the adolescent father's sense of self through early and on-going psychological processes with his parents (Moore & Fine, 1990). The study's conceptual base rests on how these processes contribute to the quality and constancy of the adolescent father's involvement with his child Unfortunately, research on adolescent fathers lags far behind the extensive body of knowledge on adolescent mothers. While there has been important research on the involvement of adolescent fathers with their children, the majority of these studies draw from samples of low income, inner-city minority populations. This study addressed a gap in the literature by researching the attachment patterns of adolescent fathers taken from a broad cross-section across all socio-economic levels From a subject population (N = 86) of adolescent fathers, aged 17 to 21 years, this study examined the impact of four categories of independent variables: (1) The demographic variable of adolescent father education level; (2) relationship with ones parents; (3) relationship with child's mother; and (4) involvement in the pregnancy and birthing experience on a composite dependent variable, involvement. Involvement in this study is conceptualized to comprise four components: (1) Involvement Sub-scale 1 (2) parental satisfaction, (3) time with child and (4) activity with child. Additionally, the impact of the independent variables on a fifth dependent variable, a combination of the four dependent variables, was also tested. Standard multiple regression was used to determine the effect of these four categories of independent variables on the adolescent father's involvement with his child The study results validated and reconfirmed the importance of the adolescent father's relationship with the child's mother and involvement in the pregnancy and birthing experience as predictors of involvement with his child. An inverse relationship was detected between the level of the adolescent father's education and his involvement with his child. Relationship with one's parents did not show statistical significance as a predictor of involvement 1Involvement Subscale refers here to one of the four measures of the main dependent variable, Involvement. When it appears in the text, it will always be referred to as Involvement Subscale to distinguish it from the parent dependent variable, Involvement / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_25846 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Contributors | Hufnagel, Paul Gerard (Author), Ager, Richard (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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