Linking Early Fathering Trajectories to Child Social Behavioral Profiles in Middle Childhood

• In Event: Leveraging Innovative Person-centered Approaches to Study the Antecedents and Consequences of Parenting and Child Behaviors

Abstract

Introduction: Early father engagement is crucial to promoting children’s social and behavioral outcomes (Lee & Schoppe-Sullivan, 2017). However, a paucity of longitudinal research has examined the co-occurrence of father engagement and aggravation, in which aggravation affects fathers' interactions and relationships with family members (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2010). Most studies use a variable-centered approach that investigates mean differences in fathers’ engagement or aggravation separately. Guided by Family Systems theory, the current study uses a person-centered approach to uncover the multidimensional trajectories of early father engagement and aggravation jointly and how they are associated with children’s latent subgroups of behavioral outcomes in middle childhood.
Method: The current study used 4 waves of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,166), a nationally representative longitudinal sample that oversampled children born to unmarried mothers. Fathers self-reported direct interaction with children to reflect father engagement and parenting stress to reflect aggravation. Primary caregivers rated children’s self-regulation and social competence at age 9. Children self-reported perseverance and delinquency at age 9. Multidimensional Growth Mixture Modeling (MGMM) was used to examine the developmental trajectories of father engagement and aggravation across three time points (when children were aged 1, 3, and 5). Latent Classes Analysis (LCA) was used to identify latent classes of children’s risk and protective behavioral outcomes at age 9. Subsequently, we examined the transition probabilities between the fathers’ trajectories to children’s class membership using the Latent Transition Analysis (LTA). Using Mplus 8.7, we used a manual three-step BCH approach estimation procedure, using Full Information Maximum Likelihood estimation with the robust maximum likelihood estimator to handle nonnormality and missing data.
Results: MGMM identified four distinct joint growth trajectories (Figure 1a): Moderate Decreasing Engagement & High Decreasing Aggravation (Class 1; n = 771, 21.9%); Moderate Stable (Class 2; n = 1,776, 50.5%); Low Increasing Engagement & Moderate Stable Aggravation (Class 3; n = 258, 7.3%); Decreasing Engagement & Increasing Aggravation (Class 4; n = 713, 20.3%). LCA identified four distinct latent classes: Moderate Protective Factors & Low Delinquency (n = 1,223, 37.3%), High Self-Regulation, Social-Competence, Lowest Perseverance & Moderate Delinquency (n = 670, 20.4%), Risk Class (n = 346, 10.6%), Protective Class (n = 1,037, 31.7%). Children with fathers in Class 1 had the highest probability of transitioning to the moderate protective factors & low delinquency class (54.2%). Children with fathers in Class 2 had the highest probability of transitioning to children’s High Self-Regulation, Social-Competence, Lowest Perseverance & Moderate Delinquency (19.9%). Children with fathers in Class 3 (5.1%) had the lowest probability of transitioning to Risk class at age 9. Children with fathers in Class 4 have the highest likelihood of transitioning to the Protective Class at age 9 (43.1%).
Discussion: The findings highlight the long-term impact of heterogeneous trajectories of father’s engagement and aggravation on children’s social behavioral profiles. Findings imply several areas for practice and policy, including family life education programs to support new father adaptation and coping strategies and policies to lighten father’s economic stress.

Authors

• Ying Xu, Syracuse University
  Presenting Author

• Qingyang Liu, Syracuse University

• Gabriel J Merrin, Syracuse University

• Rachel A Razza, Syracuse University