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Over the Past 30 Years, Researchers Have Learned Much About Father Absence and Father Involvement

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Over the Past 30 Years, Researchers Have Learned Much About Father Absence and Father Involvement Over the past 30 years, researchers have learned much about father absence and father involvement. Most of this work, however, is based upon the viewpoint of the father himself, the mother, or the researcher/observer. In this study, we examine father presence from the adult child's perspective. We provide a multidimensional definition of father presence and a conceptual framework with which to frame its three domains: Relationship with the Father, Beliefs about the Father, and Intergenerational Family Influences. We then describe the Father Presence Questionnaire (FPQ), a 10-scale instrument that examines the son's or daughter's experience with father. We establish the construct validity of the FPQ using a variety of analytic methods with a sample of adult children (N = 608) located in four regions of the United States. In addition to extremely high reliabilities of the individual scales, we establish the factorial validity of the FPQ by means of a second-order confirmatory factor analysis. We demonstrate the concurrent validity of the FPQ through correlations with existing measures assessing family relationships. The FPQ appears to be a theoretically grounded and reliable measure of the adult child's perception of and experience with father. Keywords: father, father presence, father-child relationships, measurement ********** Researchers have studied fathers and their offspring for over 30 years. Early empirical studies addressed father absence, not father presence. The conceptualization of father presence in these studies was simply understood as the father's coresidence with the child or, more aptly, the opposite of paternal nonresidence. Subsequent efforts to conceptualize and examine fathering focus on father involvement. Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine (1987) viewed paternal involvement as having three dimensions: interaction, or one-to- one father-child engagement with each other; accessibility, the father's physical presence near the child without direct interaction; and responsibility, the father's planning for and execution of plans for the child's benefit or welfare. Over the past 15 years, the work of Lamb et al. has informed and shaped much of the research on fathers (Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1998; Marsiglio, 1991; McBride, 1990; Palkovitz, 1997, 2002). More recently, Palkovitz (1997), Amato (1998), Marsiglio, Amato, Day, and Lamb (2000), and Lamb (2004) show, through their own work or reviewed studies of others, the progress in understanding the contributions men make to children's lives. Fathers provide both economic and social capital to children that affects school-related behavior and academic achievement, career development, peer relationships, self-esteem, and adult outcomes such as achievement, marital happiness, and strength of social networks (Amato, 1998). The development of the Inventory of Father Involvement (IFI; Hawkins et al., 2002), which examines men's perceptions of their parenting, exemplifies the current focus on fathers' subjective views of their own parenthood. The present study builds upon previous research on the father and introduces a new measure, the Father Presence Questionnaire (FPQ). This instrument adds to the body of research on the father in four ways. First, we redefine father presence to include aspects of paternal experience beyond the traditional measure of coresidence. We explicate our definition of father presence in the next section of the paper. Briefly, we view father presence as including the son's or daughter's relationship with the father, his/her beliefs about the father, and intergenerational family influences that may promote or undermine a positive father orientation. Second, in this work, we are interested in the adult child's experience with father. We focus on adult children and their perceptions of the fathering influences they have encountered. We are aware that most research on paternal experience focuses on children or youth. It is our belief that the father dimensions of the adult's life also merit consideration. Examination of the father experience of adults is important because individuals bring these memories and experiences into their interaction and relationships with their spouses and children. Moreover, research findings show that the quality of early parent-child relations often shapes or "drives" current behavior in both familial and nonfamilial settings (Silverstein, Conroy, Wang, Giarrusso, & Bengtson, 2002; Whitbeck, 1994). Family interaction patterns and role behaviors exhibit a noteworthy stability and consistency over time (Whitbeck, Hoyt, & Huck, 1994). A growing body of research suggests that childhood relationships in one's family of origin shape and inform current intergenerational relationships in the family of procreation. Early parent-child relationships clearly and consistently influence current bonds between adult children and their older parents. This finding emerges in both prospective as well as retrospective studies (Silverstein, Conroy, Wang, Giarrusso, & Bengtson, 2002). Finally, a focus on the adult child's experience of father presence highlights the importance of the father-child relationship throughout life (Rossi & Rossi, 1990). Third, empirical research on fathering reveals that other family of origin influences, particularly the parental marriage and the mother's view of the father, affect the quality of the son's or daughter's relationship with his/her male parent. Finally, the construction of our measure of father presence draws heavily from theory and research that examine not just what transpired between the child and the father but also takes into account the adult child's beliefs about the father and his/her perceptions of other family relationships that may color and affect the paternal bond. For example, some research suggests that each parent's paternal relationship affects the level of father involvement in his/her family of procreation (Cowan, & Cowan, 1987; Feldman, Nash, & Aschenbrenner, 1983; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). FATHER PRESENCE One goal of the present study is to advance the work on father using a richer, more complex, and detailed description of father presence beyond its earlier residential meaning. The meaning of father presence in this work comes closer to the psychological presence of the father. We view father presence as a psychological construct in the offspring rather than as a reference to paternal characteristics or behavior. Father presence may correlate with certain attitudes and actions undertaken by the male parent, but we regard father presence as a quality in or characteristic of the son or daughter. Father presence manifests in the offspring's relationship with the father, is revealed in his/her beliefs about the father, and reflects intergenerational family influences about the importance of father. Thus, father presence is not a characteristic of male offspring only; females have father presence, too. However, its level or quality may vary from individual to individual (Krampe, 2003; Krampe & Fairweather, 1993). In this formulation, father presence starts with characteristics of the child that orient him/her toward the father. Father presence has additional properties based on the offspring's experience with the personal father. The personal father is the adult male whom the son or daughter subjectively regards as the main father person in his/ her life. The personal father may be the biological parent, a stepfather, an uncle, or an unrelated male such as a teacher, therapist, or family friend. In this work, we regard the biological father as the personal father for reasons spelled out in earlier publications (Krampe, 2003, 2005; Krampe & Fairweather, 1993). We are interested in the relationship with the biological father because, in many studies of family relationships, researchers amalgamate the biological parent with other adult males such as the stepfather, the adoptive father, or another paternal figure or mentor. This may be a weakness of these other studies in that an all-inclusive definition of the father may mask or obscure specific effects related to the biological parent. In this study, we examine father presence associated with the biological parent before looking at its operation with these other men. One dimension of experience with the personal father is coresidence during childhood, because when children do not live with their father, they typically have less contact with him. As a result, coresidence impacts the quality of the father-child relationship (Coiro & Emery, 1998; Furstenburg & Morgan, 1987; Munsch, Woodward, & Darling, 1995). In the present study, coresidence is measured demographically and is not a direct component of the FPQ; nevertheless, it is expected to have an effect on the quality of father presence in the individual. Father presence is starts with the child's orientation to the father. First comes awareness of the father and his/her need for him. Awareness is accompanied by attending to the father, paying attention to his messages, and being open to him. Attending promotes the child's attunement to the father--feeling close to and identifying with him, understanding him--and from that comes a receptivity to other fathering influences in one's life such as from father figures, authority figures, and, finally, a recognition of a supreme being or Higher Power as father. These processes manifest in three dimensions or domains that we hypothesize operationalize father presence: the Relationship with the Father, Beliefs about the Father,
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