The role of the father in child development and the intergenerational transmission of inequality: Linking sociological stratification questions to developmental psychology research

Project Information

FATHERCHILD

Grant agreement ID: 757210

DOI

10.3030/757210

Project closed

EC signature date 18 December 2017

Start date 1 January 2018

End date 31 December 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 261 246,00

EU contribution

€ 1 261 246,00

Coordinated by

ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FATHERCHILD (The role of the father in child development and the intergenerational transmission of inequality: Linking sociological stratification questions to developmental psychology research)

Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2022-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The key objective of my FATHERCHILD project is to provide novel insights into the questions whether, why, and in what ways, fathers influence their children’s social, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. More specifically, this project investigates how inequalities in child outcomes develop through fathers’ parenting practices across childhood and adolescence, and how context may buffer or strengthen fathers’ role in this development of inequalities. The idea underlying the proposed research is that much can be learned about fathers’ role in child outcomes by linking sociological stratification questions to developmental psychology research on father involvement. The relevance of the current project is apparent: inequality is rising all across Europe, people are increasingly relying on their families to get by, and father involvement has become more polarized according to fathers’ socioeconomic position over the decades. The project aims to be innovative in four ways. Firstly, the application of new observation methods and state-of-the-art analytical techniques allows me to tap, more closely than hitherto, into the mechanisms underlying fathers’ influence on child outcomes. Second, unlike previous studies, this project will not limit its focus to the father-child dyad. The use of multi-actor data enables me to assess the relative importance of fathers as transmitters of inequality in the context of the wider family. Thirdly, by expanding the focus beyond the early years of children’s lives, it is possible to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how and why fathers’ role in the transmission of inequality changes across childhood and adolescence. Finally, an important contribution of the project is its potential to compare fathers’ impact on child outcomes longitudinally across three countries, allowing me to investigate the extent to which and why there is cross-national variation in the development of inequalities through fathers’ parenting practices.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The relevance of this ERC project has become even more salient in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated existing social inequalities between higher versus lower educated mothers and fathers, and between countries with more versus less generous safety nets for families and individuals. In addition to the original objectives outlined above and given the fact that we had already collected data amongst 100 families in Rotterdam (subproject 1), we deemed it to be of great scientific and societal relevance to add an online data wave, collected during the height of the pandemic in the Netherlands. This additional data wave allowed us to investigate what changes occur in terms of parenting (stress), work-life balance, and child outcomes when a country is hit by a pandemic and several governmental measures are undertaken to contain it.
The results yielded from our ERC project provide evidence that the assumption that mothers have a more important influence on child development needs to be reconsidered. Our results reveal that when we focus on relatively ‘generic’ parenting measures, such as warmth and sensitivity, we do not find evidence for differences between fathers and mothers, nor in the linkages that these parenting behaviors have with child outcomes. These findings suggest that fathers matter as much as mothers do. That said, when we turn to measures of parenting that are perceived to be more gendered (such as challenging parenting behavior), we do see some differences between mothers and fathers, and also in the linkages with child outcomes. Together, these findings provide a richer understanding of differences and similarities in mothers’ and fathers’ parenting and their relationship with child development. Finally, the results from our project indicate the importance of a family systems perspective in prevention and intervention programs, as the quality and quantity of both paternal and maternal involvement and the quantity and the quality of the co-parenting relationship are linked with child development.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Furthermore, our state-of-the-art analytical techniques allowed us to tap, more closely than hitherto, into the mechanisms underlying the association between (father’s) parenting behavior and child outcomes. Insights derived from our project reveal that stable differences between families (i.e. selection effects) rather than changes over time within families explain most of the linkages between (father’s) parenting and child/adolescent outcomes. When we did find evidence for significant within-family effects, those were mainly pertaining to child effects (and very rarely to mother’s parenting). Parenting effects varied substantially across families however, especially for fathers. In sum, our research provides more evidence for the idea that children evoke certain parenting behaviour rather than that parents shape their children’s trajectories. These insights give new impetus to fundamental scientific discussions about agency versus structure in the influence that parents have on child development.

Finally, insights derived from our project reveal that that country context shapes parenting and family functioning and that changes in policies (be them welfare cuts or Covid-19 lockdowns) affect family functioning, parenting and child outcomes. These patterns differ by SES, although in a more complicated way than is often hypothesized.

The results of our project are published in high-quality international peer-reviewed journals and have also been presented to societal stakeholders via public lectures, meetings with European and Dutch politicians and policy makers, interviews in national newspapers and television and so forth. Most importantly, our research, our meetings with politicians, and our media performances, have contributed to new legislation in the Netherlands, in particular the WIEG (Wet Introductie Extra Geboorteverlof), which, amongst others, is a substantial expansion of the number of paid leave days for fathers and partners in comparison to the previous legislation, which removes some of the financial hurdles for taking up leave.

Renske Keizer presenting the outcomes of the FATHERCHILD project during the 2022 Rotterdamlezing