Comparing Father and Mother Reports of Father Involvement among Low-Income Minority Families Author(s): Rebekah Levine Coley and Jodi Eileen Morris Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Nov., 2002), pp. 982-997 Published by: National Council on Family RelationsNational Council on Family Relations Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3599997 Accessed: 09/12/2010 16:19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ncfr. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
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REBEKAHLEVINE COLEY AND JODI EILEEN MORRIS
Boston College
FatherandMotherReportsof Father Comparing Involvement AmongLow-IncomeMinorityFamilies
Currentlyavailabledata and concernsabout the validityof reportsby motherssignificantlytruncate the abilityof researchersto addressa myriad of researchquestionsconcerningthe involvement of fathers in families. This studyaimed to inform this concernby examiningpredictorsoffather involvementandfather-motherdiscrepanciesin reports of involvementwithin a low-income,predominantlyminoritysampleof families withboth resident and nonresidentfathers (n = 228). Paired hierarchicallinear models were used to controlfor the interrelationbetweenpairs of reporters.Theresultsindicatethatalthoughfathers' and mothers'reportsare similar,mothersconsistently reportlower levels of involvementthan do fathers. Parental conflict,fathers' nonresidence, and fathers' age, as well as mothers'education and employment,predicted larger discrepancies betweenfathers' and mothers'reports. Interestin fathers'roles andbehaviorsin families has grown exponentiallyin the past 2 decadesas changingsocial normsand demographicpatterns have vastly alteredsocietal views of paternalresponsibility.Twodistinctyet intertwinedarenasof Departmentof Counseling Developmentaland Educational Psychology, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 (coleyre@bc.edu). Key Words: father involvement, low-income families, nonresident parents, paired hierarchical linear models, parental conflict, reporter agreement.
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fatheringare gaininghigh levels of attentionand concernfrom policymakers,researchers,and the public. First, the growing rates of nonmarital birthsand maritaldissolutionsin Americanfamilies have attractedattentionto issues concerning unmarriedfathers'contactwith and financialsupport of their children,which have been captured in public policies concerningpaternityestablishment,child support,andpublicsupport(e.g., welfare) of poor childrenand families(FederalInteragency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 1998). Second,as familystructuresandroleshave grown more diverse,interesthas grown dramatically in delineatinghow andwhy fathersinfluence children's healthy growth and developmentin both marriedand unmarriedfamilies (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda,Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000; Coley, 2001; Tamis-LeMonda& Cabrera, 1999). In short,questionsconcerningthe amount, type, and impact of fathers' involvementwith theirchildrenand families are arising. Althoughthese issues presenta plethoraof intriguingresearchquestions,researchersare struggling in theirattemptsto studythe domainof fatherinvolvementwith currentlyavailabledataand methods,particularlywith regardto low-income families andfamiliesin which the fatherdoes not reside with his children.This dearthof information stems from three primarycauses: simplistic measurementregardingfather involvement,fathers'nonparticipation in researchstudiesof child and development family functioning,and concernsaboutthe validityof mothers'reportsof fa-
Journalof Marriageand Family64 (November2002): 982-997
Father-Mother Reports sey & Craig, 1998; Rangarajan& Gleason,1998; Stier & Tienda, 1993; Sullivan, 1993), and father race or ethnicity(with AfricanAmericansreporting higherlevels of involvement;Lerman,1993; Seltzer, 1991) to predict higher levels of father involvement,with mixedfindingsfor child gender and less attentionpaid to the mother'scharacteristics. In addition,family relationshipsappearimportant,with numerousstudiesreportinga linkbetween father-motherconflict and lower levels of father involvement (Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1999; Furstenberg,1995; McKenry,Price, Fine, & Serovich, 1992; Nelson et al., 1999). Given these findings,one might hypothesizethat these same factors(child, parent,and couplecharacteristics) would be importantin predictingboth the level of fatherinvolvementand the discrepancy between fathers' and mothers' reportsof father involvement. SUMMARY
Currently,we are at an impassewith regardto the use of motherreportdata on fatherinvolvement because of concerns over validity and reporter bias, and this impasselimits our abilityto address both theoreticaland policy-drivenquestions. A greaterunderstandingof the congruencebetween fathers' and mothers' reportsof father involvement and of the conditionsunderwhich pairsare more or less in agreementwill help to inform questionsconcerningwhetherthe use of mothers' reportsis methodologicallydefensible.This inforof mation,in turn,will help in the interpretation findings of publishedresearchinvolving mother report methodologiesand in the planning new datacollectionstrategies. METHOD
The datafor this paperare drawnfrom a subsample of families (n = 228) from the first wave of Welfare,Children,and Families: A Three City Study,a longitudinalmultimethodanalysisof the impact of federal welfare reforms on children, parents,and families analyzedby Winstonet al. (1999). The Three City Study involves three interrelatedcomponents.First, there is a survey componentwith a stratifiedrandom sample of 2,402 childrenand their primaryfemale caregivers in low-incomefamilies(familyincomesof less than 200% of the federalpovertyline) living in low-incomeurbanneighborhoodsin Boston,Chicago, and San Antonio.Deemedeligible fromthe
985 household screeningof over 40,000 households (with a 90%screeningrate),82.5%of the families agreed to participatein in-home interviews,resultingin an overallresponserate of 74%. In eligible households,interviewersrandomlyselected one child and conductedcognitive assessments (for all children) and in-person interviews (for childrenaged 10-14), as well as interviewswith the child'sprimaryfemalecaregiver(see Winston et al., 1999, for furtherinformationon the sample and study components).At the time of the first wave of datacollectionin 1999, 32%of the families were receiving cash welfare paymentsand 73% had incomesbelow the federalpovertyline. Thirty-twopercentof the motherswere married, and 6% were cohabiting.The sample was 53% Hispanic,41% African American,and 6% nonHispanicWhite. The secondcomponentof the ThreeCity Study is the EmbeddedDevelopmentalStudy, which providesa more intensiveview of the lives of the 2- to 4-year-oldchildrenand their families from the survey sample. This componentincludes interviews with biological fathers,videotapedassessments of children and additionalinterviews with mothers,and observationsof child-caresettings and interviews with child-care providers. The thirdcomponentis an ethnographicstudy of 215 families residingin the same neighborhoods as the survey families who have been followed for approximately12 monthswith in-depthinterviews and participantobservation. Fatherandmotherinterviewdatafromthe embedded developmentalstudy componentprovide the primaryfocus for the currentanalyses. Our sample includes228 families for which we have information from main survey interviews of mothers, embedded developmentalstudy interviews of mothers,and embeddeddevelopmental studyinterviewsof fathers.All childrenwho were 2 to 4 years old at the time of the collection of the main survey data were eligible to participate in the embeddeddevelopmentalstudy. For the mothercomponent,the responseratewas 85%(n = 626). For the fathercomponent,the response ratevarieddependingon residencestatusandlevel of involvement.On the basis of mothers'reports of fathers' residence and contact with the focal child, the responserate for fatherswho resided in the child'shouseholdwas 75% (n = 97), andthatfor fatherswho hadhadcontactwiththeir child withinthe yearpriorto the surveywas 37% (n = 161), for an overallrate of 45%. (The low responserate stems from multiplefactors,includ-