Journal of Family Psychology
2012, Vol. 26, No. 6, 848 – 857
© 2012 American Psychological Association
0893-3200/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030245
Transactional Relations Between Father Involvement and Preschoolers’
Socioemotional Adjustment
Rongfang Jia, Letitia E. Kotila, and Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Ohio State University
Children’s socioemotional development is child as well as parent driven. Yet, transactional frameworks
are rarely applied to studies of father– child relations. This study examined reciprocal associations
between father involvement in play and caregiving and children’s adjustment and tested supportive
coparenting behavior as a moderator of these associations. One hundred twelve families participated in
a 1-year longitudinal study. Fathers reported on their involvement and mothers and teachers reported on
preschoolers’ behavior at two time points, and supportive coparenting behavior was observed at the
second time point. Results showed that father involvement in play predicted relative decreases in
externalizing behaviors, and also relative decreases in internalizing behaviors and relative increases in
social competence at school only when accompanied by supportive coparenting behavior; reciprocally,
fathers showed relative reductions in their play with children initially high in internalizing behaviors
perceived by teachers. Father involvement in caregiving predicted relative increases in children’s
internalizing behaviors, but reciprocal effects indicated that these associations may be driven by children.
The presence of reciprocal associations between father involvement and child behaviors that differed for
play and caregiving domains and were moderated by supportive coparenting behavior suggests the
importance of a transactional, domain-specific, and systemic approach to understanding father– child
relations and the implementation of relevant intervention practices.
Keywords: socioemotional adjustment, father– child relationships, coparenting, preschool children,
transactional relations
Veits, & Zeman, 2006) and rarely has the transactional framework
been applied to the study of relations between father involvement
and child adjustment.
To address these limitations, the current study examined reciprocal associations between father involvement and preschool-age
children’s adjustment. Guided by domain-specific theory (Grusec
& Davidov, 2010), which assumes that different parent– child
interaction domains are governed by different rules and are associated with child outcomes in distinct ways, we considered two
important domains of father involvement during the preschool
years (i.e., play and caregiving), aiming to explore how the quantity of father involvement in the two different domains affects and
is affected by children’s behavior.
The notion that the development of child adjustment problems is
child as well as parent driven has been widely accepted (Pardini,
2008). Children’s initial problematic behaviors contribute to
change in parenting over time, just as they are influenced by
parenting practices (Crouter & Booth, 2003). This bidirectional
interchange between parent and child has been elaborated in transactional models (Bates & Pettit, 2007; Patterson, 2002; Sameroff,
1975) that illustrate how specific child behaviors may initially
“push buttons” in parents, whose mismatched responses in turn
escalate the child’s initial symptoms. Although an awareness of the
importance of the father to children’s socialization (Lamb, 2010)
has spurred empirical studies linking father involvement to positive child socioemotional adjustment (Sarkadi, Kristiansson,
Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2008), fathers continue to be neglected in
the developmental psychopathology literature (Cassano, Adrian,
Father Involvement in Play and Caregiving and
Children’s Socioemotional Adjustment
Fathers have often been described as “specializing” in playoriented activities with their children. Indeed, fathers spend a
greater proportion of time in play with children than mothers
(Paquette, 2004), and boisterous play interactions with fathers
elicit highly positive responses from young children (Feldman,
2003), rendering this type of father involvement a salient and
positive influence on preschoolers who are rapidly developing
emotionally and socially (Roggman, Boyce, Cook, Christiansen, &
Jones, 2004).
Domain-specific theory (Grusec & Davidov, 2010) attributes the
benefits of father involvement in play to its “reciprocal” nature:
parents and children engaged in playful interactions are mutually
responsive to each other’s needs and interact as equal-status part-
This article was published Online First October 15, 2012.
Rongfang Jia, Letitia E. Kotila, and Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Ohio State University.
This research was supported by a National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development grant (R03 HD050235) to Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan.
We express gratitude to the parents, children, and teachers who participated
in this study and the students who assisted with data collection and coding,
especially Claire Cook, Angela Rule, Catherine Buckley, Evan Davis, and
Arielle Sheftall.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rongfang
Jia, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Ohio
State University, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail:
jia.31@osu.edu
848
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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
FATHER INVOLVEMENT
ners; children’s reasonable requests are accommodated by parents
while they are taught to follow rules and compete in appropriate
ways. This is consistent with Russell, Pettit, and Mize’s (1998)
“horizontal” interaction and Paquette’s (2004) “activation relationship,” both emphasizing the significance of fathers’ arousing and
responsible play in opening and adapting children to the world.
Indeed, studies have found that high quality play with fathers gives
children opportunities to practice skills involved in peer relationships, increasing children’s social competence (e.g., Lindsey,
Mize, & Pettit, 1997). Mutually responsive father– child play also
facilitates children’s self-regulation and development of compliance (Kochanska, Aksan, Prisco, & Adams, 2008), which reduces
children’s risk for externalizing and internalizing behaviors (Bögels & Phares, 2008; Mattanah, 2001). However, research explicitly testing how father involvement in play, especially the quantity
aspect (e.g., frequency or level of involvement), contributes to
child adjustment is limited.
On the other hand, parent– child interaction in caregiving activities such as feeding, bathing, or putting the child to bed is more
“vertical,” with parents more reliant on authority and control over
their children (Lindsey, Cremeens, & Caldera, 2010; Russell et al.,
1998) and can be categorized under the “control” and “protection”
domains (Grusec & Davidov, 2010). The “vertical” and “control”
qualities of this domain increase uncertainty regarding the effect of
level or frequency of father involvement in caregiving on child
outcomes. Indeed, although some studies have shown that fathers
who are more frequently involved in caregiving are high in parental efficacy (Barry, Smith, Deutsch, & Perry-Jenkins, 2011) and
have more sociable infants (Frascarolo, 2004), in other studies the
quantity of father involvement in caregiving either had few benefits (Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1984) or was associated with
poorer child behavioral adjustment (Culp, Schadle, Robinson, &
Culp, 2000; Mitchell & Cabrera, 2009). These inconsistencies
highlight the need to disentangle the domains of caregiving and
play when examining the impact of father involvement on child
adjustment.
Just as father involvement may affect child adjustment, father
involvement may also be affected by child behavior. However, few
studies have considered this alternative possibility. Limited studies
have shown that children with difficult temperaments, who are at
risk for behavior problems, experience reduced father involvement
(Manlove & Vernon-Feagans, 2002; McBride, Schoppe, & Rane,
2002). Whether these child-driven effects differ for play and
caregiving involvement is unclear. Father involvement in play,
which emphasizes children’s reciprocity with fathers, may be more
dampened by the aversive effect of children’s problem behaviors,
whereas father involvement in caregiving, which primarily functions to fulfill children’s needs, may be heightened when children’s needs are more challenging to meet.
Thus far, only two studies have formally tested reciprocal links
between father involvement and child adjustment and both focused
on families with adolescents and relied on mothers or/and adolescents (but not fathers) as informants regarding father involvement.
Coley and Medeiros (2007) found higher contact and responsibility for children’s care and behavior by nonresident fathers predicted decreases in adolescent delinquency over a 16-month period
but not vice versa. Hawkins, Amato, and King (2007) examined
bidirectional associations of father– child communication, closeness, and shared activities with adolescents’ problem behaviors
849
and academic competence. Their data supported both child- and
father-driven effects in resident father families. However, it is
unclear whether these results would apply to resident father families of preschool-age children and how fathers’ quantitative involvement in play and caregiving might respond differently to
children’s initial adjustment difficulties.
Coparenting Behavior as a Moderator
Father– child relations are susceptible to the quality of the coparenting relationship with the child’s mother (Schoppe-Sullivan,
Brown, Cannon, Mangelsdorf, & Sokolowski, 2008). Coparenting
behavior can be primarily defined as the extent to which parents
support versus undermine each other’s parenting efforts (SchoppeSullivan et al., 2008). A high-quality coparenting relationship has
been found to be important for supportive father-adolescent relationships (Sobolewski & King, 2005) and children’s positive adjustment (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010). The current study examined
the moderating effect of coparenting behavior on the prospective
associations between father involvement and child adjustment,
positing that the effect of father involvement on child adjustment
would become vulnerable in the face of coparental discord, but
strengthened in the context of supportive coparenting behavior
(Goeke-Morey & Cummings, 2007). Although direct evidence
does not exist for the proposed moderating effect of supportive
coparenting behavior, Sturge-Apple, Davies, and Cummings
(2006) found that interparental withdrawal compromised fathers’
emotional availability in play, which was associated with greater
behavior problems in 6 year olds.
Reciprocally, coparenting behavior may also moderate prospective associations between child behavior and father involvement,
in light of evidence indicating that a supportive relationship draws
parents of temperamentally challenging children together
(Schoppe-Sullivan, Mangelsdorf, Brown, & Sokolowski, 2007)
and that infant difficult temperament impacts parents adversely
only in conjunction with other family risks such as undermining
coparenting behavior (see Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2003 for a
review). As such, fathers may become more involved with children
initially high in problem behaviors when they have a supportive
coparenting relationship with their child’s mother. To our knowledge, no prior studies have tested whether transactional relations
between father involvement and child adjustment may be qualified
as a function of coparenting behavior, nor is there direct evidence
regarding how such moderation effects may differ for play and
caregiving domains of father involvement.
The Present Study
In the current study, we focused on preschool-aged children’s
externalizing and internalizing behaviors that often persist, negatively influencing later functioning. We also included teacher
reports of preschoolers’ social competence that reflected the
child’s ability to regulate their behaviors and interactions with
peers (Ladd, 1999). We relied on fathers’ reports of their involvement, which have greater predictive validity than mothers’ reports
(Hernandez & Coley, 2007) and utilized mothers and teachers as
independent informants of child behavior in an effort to minimize
shared informant effects and to provide complementary perspectives.
JIA, KOTILA, AND SCHOPPE-SULLIVAN
850
Hypotheses About Father Involvement in Play
We expected that father involvement in play would be associated with relative decreases in externalizing and internalizing
behaviors and relative increases in social competence, especially
for families characterized by supportive coparenting behavior
(parent-driven main and moderating effects). Reciprocally, we
expected initially high levels of child problem behaviors and social
incompetence to predict relative decreases in father involvement in
play, especially within an unsupportive coparenting context (childdriven main and moderating effects).
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Hypotheses About Father Involvement in Caregiving
Because of the more “vertical” nature of father involvement in
caregiving and its inconsistent associations with child functioning
in the existing literature, we advanced no specific hypotheses with
respect to prospective associations between father involvement in
caregiving and child adjustment (parent-driven effects). However, we
anticipated that preschoolers’ initial problem behaviors and social
incompetence would be associated with relative increases in father
involvement in caregiving, especially when coparenting behavior was
supportive (child-driven main and moderating effects).
Method
Participants and Procedure
The sample included 112 families (mother, father, 4-year-old
child; 54 girls) recruited from a large midwestern U.S. city and
surrounding area through a network of local preschools and daycare centers, advertisements, and a “snowball” approach. To meet
inclusion criteria, parents were required to be married or cohabiting together with the focal child (98% were married). On average,
mothers were 36 (SD ⫽ 5.26) and fathers 39 years old (SD ⫽
5.74). Most focal children were first (59.8%) or second (26.8%)
born. Eighty-four percent of mothers and 81% of fathers had
obtained at least a college degree, and the sample was primarily
European American (86% of mothers and 84% of fathers). Median
family income ranged from $71,000 to 80,000 per year, and more
than half (58%) of mothers and nearly all fathers (94%) were
employed outside of the home. For further sample information, see
Jia and Schoppe-Sullivan (2011).
Parents visited the laboratory together with their child two
times, 1 year apart (Time 1 and Time 2). Two weeks prior to each
visit, mothers completed questionnaires about child behavior problems and fathers completed questionnaires about their involvement. Two triadic interaction tasks involving both parents and the
focal child were videotaped at the second lab visit to assess coparenting behavior. The focal child’s current preschool or kindergarten
teacher was asked to report on the child’s behaviors via questionnaire.
Seventy-eight teachers (70%) at Time 1 and 79 teachers (85%) at
Time 2 returned completed questionnaires. Following the University
Institutional Review Board’s procedures, informed consent was obtained from parents. Families were given $80 and teachers were given
$5 as incentives for their participation.
Ninety-three families completed the assessment at Time 2. Attrition (17%) was primarily due to an inability to contact families,
geographic relocation, and parents being “too busy” to participate.
Families participating at both times were not significantly different
from families who only participated at Time 1 on all family,
parent, and child variables, except that mothers who participated
only at Time 1 worked fewer hours per week than mothers who
participated in the follow up, t(109) ⫽ ⫺2.18, p ⬍ .05.
Measures
Father involvement in play and caregiving activities. Using
13 items from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Study
(Cabrera et al., 2004), fathers reported on the frequency of their
involvement in play activities (six items; e.g., “take him/her for a
ride on your shoulders or back”; ␣ ⫽ .76 for Time 1 and .80 for
Time 2) and caregiving activities with the focal child (seven items;
e.g., “Help get him/her dressed”; ␣ ⫽ .73 for Time 1 and .69 for
Time 2) during the past month (1 ⫽ not at all; 6 ⫽ more than once
a day). In order to reduce the number of indices of each latent
variable and thus reduce the number of parameters to be estimated
in structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses, item parceling
was utilized to derive three parcels from the six items to index the
latent variable of father involvement in play and three parcels from
the seven items to index the latent variable of father involvement
in caregiving at each time point (Hall, Snell, & Foust, 1999).
Confirmatory factor analysis supported this two-factor structure at
Time 1 and Time 2, 2(42) ⫽ 52.21, p ⫽ .13, root mean square
error of approximation (RMSEA) ⫽ .05 with 90% confidence
intervals (CIs) [0.0, 0.08], with factor loadings all statistically
significant and ranging from .61 to .72 for play and .51 to .74 for
caregiving.
Supportive coparenting behavior. During the lab visit at
Time 2, each family played a board game together for 15 min and
completed a puzzle together for 5 min (see Jia & SchoppeSullivan, 2011). The 20 min of family interaction was coded for
eight coparenting behaviors including pleasure, warmth, cooperation, interactiveness, displeasure, coldness, anger, and competition, using a system developed by Cowan and Cowan (1996) and
validated in previous research (see Schoppe, Mangelsdorf, & Frosch, 2001, for descriptions of the coding scales). Two trained
coders were each randomly assigned half of the family interactions
and overlapped on 34% of the episodes. Gammas for the scales
ranged from 0.59 to 0.90 (M ⫽ 0.77), indicating acceptable interrater reliability. The two episodes’ scores were averaged for each
coparenting behavior scale. Displeasure, coldness, anger, and competition were reversed and combined with the other four scales to
form a composite supportive coparenting score (standardized ␣ ⫽
.77), with higher scores on this observed variable indicating higher
levels of supportive and lower levels of undermining coparenting
behavior.
Children’s adjustment. At each time point, mothers reported
on child externalizing (19 items; ␣ ⫽ .91 at Time 1; .91 at Time
2) and internalizing (25 items; ␣ ⫽ .85 at Time 1; .80 at Time 2)
behaviors using the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). From these items, three parcels were created to
index the latent variable of mothers’ reports of children’s externalizing behavior and three to index the latent variable of mothers’
reports of children’s internalizing behavior, at each time point.
Children’s externalizing (Anger-Aggression; 10 items; e.g.,
“Easily frustrated”; ␣ ⫽ .89 at Time 1 and .88 at Time 2) and
internalizing (Anxiety-Withdrawal; 10 items; e.g., “Remain apart,
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FATHER INVOLVEMENT
isolated from the group”; ␣ ⫽ .89 at Time 1 and .88 at Time 2)
behaviors and Social Competence (10 items; e.g., “Negotiates
solutions to conflicts with other children”; ␣ ⫽ .89 at Time 1 and
.80 at Time 2) were also measured from the teacher or child care
provider’s perspective at both time points using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale–Short Form (LaFreniere &
Dumas, 1996). Three indicators each for teacher-reported externalizing behavior, teacher-reported internalizing behavior, and
teacher-reported social competence were created using item parceling at each time point.
Teachers’ and mothers’ reports of child problem behaviors were
not significantly correlated; thus, mother- and teacher-report latent
variables were constructed separately. CFA confirmed the acceptable fit of the measurement model for the 10 latent preschoolers’
behavior variables: 2(360) ⫽ 548.24, p ⬍ .005, RMSEA ⫽ .07
with 90% CI [0.06, 0.08] with factor loadings all statistically
significant and ranging from .55 to .95 for teachers’ reports and
from .60 to .89 for mothers’ reports.
Control variables. Mother involvement and father involvement are not independent (Pleck & Hofferth, 2008), and thus,
identical measures of mothers’ involvement in play and caregiving
activities with the target children at Time 1 (␣ ⫽ .70 and .60,
respectively) were controlled in the model together with other
covariates including parental age, family size, parents’ education,
family income, child gender, and family earner status.
Results
Preliminary Results
The descriptive statistics for and the correlations among the
summary scores for the key variables at Time 1 and Time 2 are
shown in Table 1. Although few significant direct correlations
were found between father involvement and children’s behavior,
851
we observed that father involvement in play was mainly negatively
correlated with child externalizing/internalizing behaviors,
whereas father involvement in caregiving was correlated in inconsistent directions with child behavior. In addition, supportive coparenting behavior was not significantly associated with child
adjustment. There were significant positive correlations between
each father involvement variable from Time 1 to Time 2, and
between each child outcome variable from Time 1 to Time 2,
supporting our decision to control the stability of each latent
variable in the subsequent analysis.
In addition, although these results are not shown in Table 1,
mothers and fathers were positively correlated with each other in
their play involvement at Time 1, r ⫽ .21, p ⬍ .05, and mothers’
caregiving at Time 1 was significantly associated with fathers’
caregiving at Time 2, r ⫽ .31, p ⬍ .01, but not at Time 1. The only
significant association between maternal involvement and child
adjustment was a significant negative association between maternal involvement in play and externalizing behaviors reported by
teachers at Time 1, r ⫽ ⫺.21, p ⬍ .05. There were also significant
correlations among the parceled items of each latent variable,
supporting the construction of these variables for SEM.
Analysis Plan
We first examined reciprocal associations between father involvement and preschoolers’ behavior (see Figure 1). In each
model, the longitudinal paths were specified from one father
involvement variable at Time 1 to a child behavior at Time 2 and
from that child behavior at Time 1 to that type of father involvement at Time 2. Therefore, a total set of 10 models were specified
and tested separately for preschoolers’ externalizing behaviors
(teacher vs. mother report), internalizing behaviors (teacher vs.
mother report), and social competence (teacher report), and separately for father involvement in play versus caregiving. Also
Table 1
Intercorrelations and Descriptive Statistics
Measure
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
M
SD
N
(F)PLAY T1
(F)CARE T1
(F)PLAY T2
(F)CARE T2
(T)EXT T1
(M)EXT T1
(T)INT T1
(M)INT T1
(T)SC T1
(T)EXT T2
(M)EXT T2
(T)INT T2
(M)INT T2
(T)SC T2
COP
1
2
3
4
5
.36ⴱⴱ
.70ⴱⴱ
.33ⴱⴱ
⫺.05
⫺.01
⫺.06
⫺.07
⫺.06
⫺.15
.07
⫺.09
⫺.01
⫺.09
.12
3.62
.75
112
.37ⴱⴱ
.65ⴱⴱ
.07
.13
⫺.27ⴱⴱ
⫺.02
⫺.04
.13
.13
⫺.06
.15
⫺.18
⫺.10
3.71
.64
112
.53ⴱⴱ
⫺.02
.12
⫺.22
.02
⫺.02
⫺.19
.07
⫺.13
.07
⫺.02
.15
3.42
.80
91
.11
.29ⴱⴱ
⫺.22
.26ⴱ
.02
.05
.16
⫺.00
.27ⴱ
⫺.19
⫺.01
3.44
.62
91
.31ⴱⴱ
.07
.13
⫺.50ⴱⴱ
.59ⴱⴱ
.49ⴱⴱ
⫺.12
.29ⴱⴱ
⫺.28ⴱ
.08
1.74
.70
94
6
7
.10
.68ⴱⴱ
.19
⫺.31ⴱⴱ ⫺.22ⴱ
.13
⫺.13
.76ⴱⴱ
.12
⫺.06
.58ⴱⴱ
.67ⴱⴱ
.21
⫺.06
.02
.10
.05
.50
1.71
.34
.69
112
94
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
⫺.05
.04
.40ⴱⴱ
.16
.72ⴱⴱ
⫺.06
.05
.27
.21
112
⫺.26ⴱ
⫺.32ⴱⴱ
⫺.14
⫺.17
.31ⴱⴱ
⫺.12
4.09
.86
94
.36ⴱⴱ
⫺.01
.28ⴱ
⫺.53ⴱⴱ
⫺.13
1.49
.56
79
⫺.14
.63ⴱⴱ
⫺.14
.11
.43
.32
92
.18
⫺.30ⴱⴱ
⫺.13
1.79
.69
79
⫺.19
⫺.03
.25
.18
92
.03
4.47
.76
79
3.35
.28
89
Note. PLAY ⫽ Parent involvement in play activities with children; CARE ⫽ Parent involvement in caregiving activities with children; COP ⫽ Supportive
coparenting behavior; EXT ⫽ Child externalizing behaviors; INT ⫽ Child internalizing behaviors; SC ⫽ Child social competence; (F) ⫽ Reported by
fathers; (T) ⫽ Reported by teachers; (M) ⫽ Reported by mothers; T1 ⫽ Time 1; T2 ⫽ Time 2.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.
JIA, KOTILA, AND SCHOPPE-SULLIVAN
852
Father
Involvement
T2
Father
Involvement
T1
Covariates
Child Outcome
T1
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Figure 1.
Child Outcome
T2
The hypothesized main effects models.
controlled were the stability of father involvement and child behaviors over time, residual correlations between father involvement and child behavior at each time point, the error correlations
of the repeated measures across time, and the effects of covariates.
Next, an observed variable representing supportive coparenting
behavior was included to test its moderation of reciprocal associations between father involvement and child behavior (see Figure
2). In each model, a child behavior at Time 2 was predicted by one
father involvement variable at Time 1, supportive coparenting
behavior at Time 2, and one newly created latent variable representing the interaction effect of supportive coparenting with the
father involvement variable; each father involvement variable at
Time 2 was also predicted by child behavior at Time 1, supportive
coparenting behavior at Time 2, and a newly created latent variable
representing the interaction between child behavior and supportive
coparenting behavior (Marsh, Wen, & Hau, 2004). The moderation
effect models were identical to the main effects models in all other
respects, except that indicators of latent variables in the former
were mean centered.
SEM in LISREL 8.70 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2004) was applied
in this study. Missing data were handled using the full information
maximum likelihood (FIML) approach, which has been shown to
produce unbiased parameter estimates and standard errors using all
the data available for each individual (Marcoulides & Schumacker,
1996). Because FIML estimation requires the data to be distributed
as multivariate normal, the assumption of which might not be met
in the current study due to the skewness of the child behavior
variables, bootstrapping was used as a supplement for the purpose
of more robust estimation in the face of nonnormality (Shrout &
Bolger, 2002). In the current study, 200 samples were drawn
randomly from the original dataset (fraction ⫽ 70%) to generate
200 sets of parameter estimates and their means and 95% CIs.
Significance was achieved if zero did not fall within the bootstrapped 95% CIs for the path coefficient of interest.
Unstandardized solutions and their statistical significance in
both FIML and bootstrapping are reported in the text for significant parameter estimates. The completely standardized estimates
and their significance in FIML as well as the fit of the models
(evaluated by the chi-square test and RMSEA with its 90% CIs;
Bollen, 1989) are summarized in Table 2. Simple slope analyses
(Holmbeck, 2002) aided interpretation of significant interaction
effects.
Longitudinal Associations Between Father Involvement
and Child Behavior
All main effects models fit the data well (see Table 2). Each type
of father involvement showed significant and distinct longitudinal
associations with preschoolers’ behaviors as reported by teachers.
Specifically, when fathers reported more frequent involvement in
play activities with preschoolers at Time 1, preschoolers exhibited
lower levels of externalizing behavior ( in FIML ⫽ ⫺0.20, p ⬍
Coparenting T2
Father
Involvement
T1
Father
Involvement
T2
Father Inv ×
Coparenting
Covariates
Child outcome
T1
Child outcome
× Coparenting
Figure 2.
The hypothesized moderation effects models.
Child Outcome
T2
0.01
108.77
0.41
106
0.02
0.0, 0.05
0.04
0.12
0.12
0.14
0.09
281.82
0.02
234
0.04
0.02, 0.06
0.08
⫺0.13
0.64ⴱⴱ
0.67ⴱⴱ
294.93
⬍0.01
234
0.05
0.03, 0.06
0.66ⴱⴱ
0.66ⴱⴱ
107.63
0.44
106
0.01
0.0, 0.05
ⴚ0.23ⴱ
0.05
ⴚ0.26ⴱ
0.03
⫺0.02
⫺0.10
0.72ⴱⴱ
0.68ⴱⴱ
0.72ⴱⴱ
0.66ⴱⴱ
118.89
0.18
106
0.03
0.0, 0.06
0
0.30ⴱ
⫺0.09
0.33ⴱ
⫺0.10
283.94
0.01
234
0.04
0.02, 0.06
0.01
0.08
0.64ⴱⴱ
0.84ⴱⴱ
0.10
323.57
⬍0.01
234
0.06
0.04, 0.07
ⴚ0.29ⴱ
0.07
⫺0.16
ⴚ0.26ⴱ
0.70ⴱⴱ
0.71ⴱⴱ
0.62ⴱⴱ
0.85ⴱⴱ
132.74
0.04
106
0.05
0.01, 0.07
⫺0.10
ⴚ0.26ⴱ
0.70ⴱⴱ
0.72ⴱⴱ
Moderation
Internalizing
Main
140.75
0.01
106
0.05
0.03, 0.08
⫺0.10
0.07
0.70ⴱⴱ
0.28ⴱⴱ
114.78
0.26
106
0.03
0.0, 0.06
⫺0.02
0.05
0.73ⴱⴱ
0.26ⴱ
0.02
0.15
322.89
⬍0.01
234
0.06
0.04, 0.07
⫺0.10
⫺0.04
⫺0.10
0.08
0.70ⴱⴱ
0.29ⴱ
272.50
0.04
234
0.04
0.01, 0.06
0.36ⴱⴱ
0.02
0.08
0.06
0.73ⴱⴱ
0.28ⴱ
Moderation
Social competence
Main
106.87
0.46
106
0.01
0.0, 0.05
⫺0.04
0.22ⴱ
0.66ⴱⴱ
0.80ⴱⴱ
113.94
0.28
106
0.03
0.0, 0.06
0.06
0.09
0.73ⴱⴱ
0.79ⴱⴱ
0.02
0
276.30
0.03
234
0.04
0.01, 0.06
⫺0.09
0.11
⫺0.03
0.23ⴱ
0.66ⴱⴱ
0.80ⴱⴱ
271.56
0.05
234
0.04
0.01, 0.06
0.01
⫺0.04
0.05
0.08
0.73ⴱⴱ
0.79ⴱⴱ
Moderation
Externalizing
Main
105.26
0.50
106
0.0
0.0, 0.05
0.06
0.21ⴱ
0.70ⴱ
0.77ⴱ
116.71
0.22
106
0.03
0.0, 0.06
0.02
0.04
0.74ⴱⴱ
0.77ⴱⴱ
0
0.02
254.50
0.17
234
0.03
0.0, 0.05
0.04
0.05
0.05
0.21ⴱ
0.70ⴱⴱ
0.77ⴱⴱ
262.95
0.09
234
0.03
0.0, 0.05
0.10
⫺0.17
0.07
0.05
0.75ⴱⴱ
0.78ⴱⴱ
Moderation
Internalizing
Main
Mother report
Note. t1 ⫽ measured at Time 1; t2 ⫽ measured at Time 2; Cop ⫽ Coparenting behavior; DF ⫽ degrees of freedom; CI ⫽ confidence interval; RMSEA ⫽ root mean square error of approximation;
⌬R2 ⫽ additional proportion of variance of outcome variable, that is newly explained by moderation model compared to main model. The arrow, ¡, refers to the predictive direction, with variables
on the left side of arrow indicating the predictors and variable on the right side of arrow indicating the predicted. Boldface values ⫽ Significant solutions.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01. ⌬ p ⫽ .07.
Father involvement in play
Stability
Fathert1¡t2
Childt1¡t2
Main effect
Fathert1 ¡ childt2
Childt1 ¡ fathert2
Interaction effect
Fathert1 ⫻ copt2 ¡ childt2
Childt1 ⫻ copt2 ¡ fathert2
Model fit
2
p
DF
RMSEA
90% CIs of RMSEA
⌬R2moderation model⫺main model
Father involvement in caregiving
Stability
Fathert1¡t2
Childt1¡t2
Main effect
Fathert1 ¡ childt2
Childt1 ¡ fathert2
Interaction effect
Fathert1 ⫻ copt2 ¡ childt2
Childt1 ⫻ copt2 ¡ fathert2
Model fit
2
p
DF
RMSEA
90% CIs of RMSEA
⌬R2moderation model⫺main model
Moderation
Externalizing
Main
Teacher report
Table 2
Model Fit and Standardized Solutions for the Main Effects and Moderation Effects Models
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FATHER INVOLVEMENT
853
JIA, KOTILA, AND SCHOPPE-SULLIVAN
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.05; mean  in bootstrap ⫽ ⫺0.22 with 95% CIs between ⫺0.27
and ⫺0.16) as reported by their teachers 1 year later relative to
their peers. However, when fathers were initially more frequently
involved in caregiving activities, preschoolers displayed higher
levels of internalizing behavior ( in FIML ⫽ 0.34, p ⬍ .01; mean
 in bootstrap ⫽ 0.37 with 95% CIs between 0.18 and 0.57)
reported by teachers 1 year later, relative to their peers. These
results partially supported the parent-driven main effect hypotheses in predicting teacher-reported child behaviors. However, neither father involvement variable showed any significant crosslagged effects in predicting mother-reported child behaviors.
Although father involvement in play did not significantly predict preschoolers’ internalizing behaviors reported by teachers at
Time 2 as hypothesized, either, we found that when teachers
reported greater child internalizing behavior at Time 1, these
children experienced relatively less play involvement from fathers
in the subsequent year ( in FIML ⫽ ⫺0.24, p ⬍ .05; mean  in
bootstrap ⫽ ⫺0.14 with 95% CIs between ⫺0.18 and ⫺0.10).
Also, when mothers reported higher child externalizing ( in
FIML ⫽ 0.39, p ⬍ .05; mean  in bootstrap ⫽ 0.40 with 95% CIs
between 0.35 and 0.46) or internalizing ( in FIML ⫽ 0.67, p ⬍
.05; mean  in bootstrap ⫽ 0.77 with 95% CIs between 0.68 and
0.86) behavior at Time 1, the children’s fathers were relatively
more likely to be involved in caregiving at Time 2. These results
partially supported the child-driven main effect hypotheses in
predicting father involvement.
No direct longitudinal links were found between father involvement in play or caregiving activities and teacher-reported social
competence in either hypothesized direction.
Supportive Coparenting as a Moderator of Links
Between Father Involvement and Child Behavior
Further analysis testing the moderating effect of supportive
coparenting behaviors in the association between father involvement and child outcomes found two significant interaction effects
(see Table 2). In particular, the interaction of father involvement in
play and supportive coparenting behavior predicted preschoolers’
internalizing behavior ( in FIML ⫽ ⫺0.71, p ⬍ .01; mean  in
bootstrap ⫽ ⫺0.41, with 95% CIs between ⫺0.27 and ⫺0.56) and
social competence ( in FIML ⫽ 1.21, p ⬍ .01; mean  in
bootstrap ⫽ 1.24, with 95% CIs between 1.08 and 1.41) reported
by their teachers at Time 2. Analysis of simple slopes showed
when fathers reported more frequent involvement in play activities, children showed fewer internalizing behaviors ( ⫽ ⫺0.35,
p ⬍ .01; Figure 3) and greater social competence ( ⫽ 0.42, p ⬍
.01; Figure 4) in school 1 year later relative to children whose
fathers were less involved in play, but only when parents engaged
in higher levels of supportive coparenting behavior. When parents
showed lower levels of supportive coparenting, fathers’ involvement in play was not significant in predicting children’s internalizing behavior ( ⫽ 0.05, p ⫽ .72; Figure 3), but was associated
with a relative decrease in children’s social competence reported
by teachers ( ⫽ ⫺0.26, p ⬍ .05; Figure 4).
Discussion
Results of this study highlight the importance of considering
father– child relations from a transactional, domain-specific per-
Y = child internalizing behaviors (teacher report)
0.8
internalizing behaviors
854
0.6
0.4
Low positive coparenting,
b = 0.05, p = 0.72
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
High positive coparenting,
b = -0.35, p < 0.01
-0.6
-0.8
low father play
1
high father2 play
Figure 3. Significant effects of father involvement in play on teacherreported child internalizing behaviors qualified by supportive coparenting
behavior. b ⫽ unstandardized coefficient of simple slope. Low and high
scores correspond to ⫺1 SD below and ⫹1 SD above the mean of that
variable.
spective and recognizing that the role of father involvement hinges
on family system variables such as coparenting behavior. Father
involvement in play was associated with relative decreases in child
externalizing behavior in the school setting and with relative
decreases in internalizing behavior and increases in social competence at school only when combined with supportive coparenting
behavior; reciprocally, when children displayed initially high levels of internalizing behavior as perceived by teachers, fathers
showed lower involvement in play 1 year later. Although father
involvement in caregiving was associated with relative increases in
child internalizing behaviors reported by teachers, this unexpected
association may have been in part driven by children, as we also
found that fathers were more involved in caregiving for children
who had higher initial levels of externalizing and internalizing
behavior perceived by mothers.
Transactional Associations Between Father
Involvement and Child Behavior
As anticipated, greater father involvement in play was associated with relative decreases in preschoolers’ externalizing behavior in the school context and was also associated with relative
decreases in internalizing behavior and relative increases in social
competence as reported by teachers when accompanied by supportive coparenting behavior. This validated the notion that father–
child play, likely characterized by reciprocity (Grusec & Davidov,
2010), mutual compliance (Lindsey et al., 2010), and horizontal in
nature (Russell et al., 1998), sets the stage for the optimal socioemotional development of children (Bögels, & Phares, 2008; Mattanah, 2001; Roggman et al., 2004). Just as greater father involvement in play was linked to relative declines in teacher-reported
child internalizing behaviors in the context of supportive coparenting behavior, fathers’ subsequent involvement in play was
lower when their children had higher initial levels of teacherreported internalizing behaviors, which is consistent with transactional perspectives (Patterson, 2002; Sameroff, 1975). In our
study, fathers of children higher in internalizing behavior may
have been less attuned to their children’s requests for play or may
have felt emotionally drained by interacting with children who are
often emotionally negative and behaviorally withdrawn. As a
result, these fathers may have become less motivated to initiate
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FATHER INVOLVEMENT
Figure 4. Significant effects of father involvement in play on teacherreported child social competence qualified by supportive coparenting behavior. b ⫽ unstandardized coefficient of simple slope. Low and high
scores correspond to ⫺1 SD below and ⫹1 SD above the mean of that
variable.
play with their children. Or, from the “person-environment fit”
perspective (Bates & Pettit, 2007), fathers of children who are high
in internalizing behaviors may adjust the intensity of playful
interactions in response to children’s negative reactions to vigorous play.
Unexpectedly, father involvement in caregiving appeared to be
a “risk” for preschoolers’ adjustment, as evident by its prospective
associations with greater internalizing behavior rated by teachers,
regardless of the quality of parents’ coparenting behavior. This
intriguing result is not implausible considering the “vertical” nature of this parenting domain (Grusec & Davidov, 2010; Russell et
al., 1998). We speculate that if father involvement in caregiving
often relies on power assertion and directiveness (Lindsey et al.,
2010), resulting in greater potential for “over protection” or “over
control,” children’s risk for problem behaviors may increase.
However, this speculation cannot be verified in the current study
because of the quantitative, but not qualitative, nature of the father
involvement measure (see Lindsey et al. for a study that measured
the quality of father involvement in caregiving). It is also possible
that father involvement in caregiving is accompanied by other
family processes such as maternal depression (Mezulis, Hyde, &
Clark, 2004), maternal gatekeeping (Schoppe-Sullivan et al.,
2008), marital conflict (Bonney, Kelley, & Levant, 1999), or
family stress (Mitchell & Cabrera, 2009), which were not measured in this study but could explain caregiving’s positive associations with child internalizing behaviors. For instance, if fathers do
more (but lower quality) caregiving when mothers are depressed
and if maternal depression is associated with child internalizing
behavior, then a positive association between father involvement
in caregiving and child internalizing behavior might be explained
by maternal depression. Whether the unexpected effect of father
involvement in caregiving was partially driven by the malfunctioning of depressed mothers or other factors should be investigated in the future.
The positive association between father involvement in caregiving and child internalizing behavior may also have been driven by
children. Indeed, analysis of reciprocal effects from child adjustment to father involvement showed that mother-reported child
externalizing and internalizing behaviors were prospectively associated with relative increases in fathers’ involvement in caregiving,
supporting our hypothesis that fathers would increase their care-
855
giving involvement in response to child problem behaviors. Consistent with our findings, some studies have shown that children
with a genetically driven tendency to exhibit problem behaviors
could evoke parents’ greater involvement (Larsson, Viding, Rijsdijk, & Plomin, 2008). That father involvement in caregiving was
sensitive to mothers’ but not teachers’ ratings of child behavior
may be because the problematic behaviors of preschoolers were
more salient in the home than in school. This evocative effect of
children’s difficulties on father involvement in caregiving may be
a feature of two-parent community families like those studied here,
and additional research is needed to determine whether fathers in
other populations (e.g., nonresident, low socioeconomic status
fathers) show the same pattern of relative increase in involvement
in the face of child behavior problems.
The Moderating Role of Supportive Coparenting
Behavior
Consistent with the important roles attributed to coparenting in
relation to fathering (Sobolewski & King, 2005) and child adjustment (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010), our results indicated that fathers’
involvement in play only protected children from internalizing
behavior and deficits in social competence at school when parents
demonstrated supportive coparenting behavior. In families where
parents rarely showed support of each other’s parenting efforts,
greater father involvement in play was even associated with relative decreases in preschoolers’ social competence. Perhaps unsupportive coparenting behavior caused emotional tension and insecurity in children (Goeke-Morey & Cummings, 2007), which may
have “cancelled out” benefits of father involvement in play, or, in
families with low observed coparenting support but high levels of
father– child play, children may be exposed to “covert” coparenting processes (McHale, 1997) in which one parent disparages the
other parent in that parent’s absence. It is not hard to imagine how
such interactions could compromise the child’s development of
appropriate social skills. Overall, the cooperative and coordinated
involvement of both parents seems to play an important role in the
extent to which fathers’ involvement in play equips children with
the skills they need to approach the social world more successfully.
In contrast to the moderating effect of supportive coparenting
behavior in prospective associations from father involvement to
child behavior, fathers’ adjustments in involvement in response to
child behaviors were independent of the quality of parents’ coparenting relationship. This may be because, as a genetically informed study found, parents’ effects on subsequent child behaviors
were mainly via environmental mechanisms (Larsson et al., 2008).
The current study showed that supportive coparenting behavior is
an important environmental mechanism that moderates parentdriven effects. In contrast, children’s problem behaviors that evoke
subsequent parental involvement were mainly genetically influenced (Larsson et al., 2008), reflected as, in the current study, the
relative independence of the child-driven effects on father involvement from coparenting behavior. Future research should test the
coparenting moderation hypothesis in families of lower socioeconomic status or with nonresident fathers, in which fathers’ involvement may be more closely tied to the coparenting relationship
(Sobolewski & King, 2005).
In addition to this study’s numerous strengths, including a
longitudinal design that allowed for examination of reciprocal
JIA, KOTILA, AND SCHOPPE-SULLIVAN
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856
associations between father involvement and child adjustment,
observational assessment of supportive coparenting behavior, and
inclusion of perspectives on child adjustment from within and
outside of the family, several limitations should be noted. The use
of a sample of mostly European American families headed by
college-educated, married parents may limit generalizability of this
study’s findings. In addition, because we did not observe dyadic
father– child interactions, we could not directly ascertain the quality of father involvement. Moreover, although we perceived the
use of fathers’ reports of their own involvement with their children
as a strength given greater predictive validity (Hernandez & Coley,
2007), our study could have been further strengthened by the
inclusion of mothers’ reports of father involvement. Finally, this
study’s short term longitudinal design and focus on preschool-age
children leaves open the question of whether the bidirectional
patterns found here would change as children mature and gain
greater independence.
Conclusion and Implications
In sum, we found that the associations between father involvement and child adjustment are reciprocal in play and caregiving
domains. Father involvement in play protects children from problem behaviors and facilitates children’s social competence, especially when parents have a supportive coparenting relationship. On
the other hand, fathers reduced their play with children perceived
by teachers as high in internalizing behaviors. Although father
involvement in caregiving was associated with more child internalizing behaviors (regardless of coparenting behavior), further
tests found that this link may be part of a process driven by
children. That is, children (perceived by their mothers) as high in
externalizing and internalizing behaviors evoked more father involvement in caregiving activities.
One of the most obvious implications of this set of findings is
the importance of the inclusion of fathers in the treatment of child
adjustment difficulties (Bögels & Phares, 2008). Because father
involvement in play appears to protect children from externalizing
and internalizing behavior and foster their competence, identifying
those aspects of father– child playful interactions that are most
facilitative of development and incorporating them in intervention
programs may be of practical value. That some of the benefits of
fathers’ play depended on the presence of supportive coparenting
behavior reminds us that interventions for child adjustment problems should take into account interparental relationships within a
developmental framework (Dodge & Pettit, 2003). Finally, knowing that fathers appear to shift their efforts from play to caregiving
involvement in response to higher levels of problem behaviors in
their children, who then potentially become more vulnerable as a
result, could be informative in advancing theory about father–
child relationships and designing interventions aimed at breaking
coercive father– child cycles.
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Received March 26, 2012
Revision received August 19, 2012
Accepted August 22, 2012 䡲
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