ABSTRACT
Over the past quarter century, researchers have paid increased attention to the roles that fathers play in their children’s lives (Lamb, 1997). Scholars and social commentators have been especially concerned about day-to-day interactions with children and responsibility for child care, which we call paternal or father involvement in this chapter (Lamb, 2000). Secular increases in the rates of maternal employment have fostered widespread expectations that fathers should assume increased responsibility for their children’s day-to-day care (Lamb, 1986; Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Pleck, 1997), and there is clear evidence of steady but small changes in this direction (Pleck, 1997). Several researchers have also shown that children benefit when their fathers are sensitively responsive and play active roles in childrearing (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; Lamb, 1986, 1997; Pleck, 1997), although few studies have been longitudinal in nature. In addition, whereas many researchers now believe both that fathers play important roles in child development and that the extent of paternal involvement is formatively significant, few have specifically focused on the stability of father involvement, convergence among the diverse measures that have been used, and factors that may affect fathers’ involvement over time. These issues were examined in our ongoing longitudinal study of 144 Swedish families, recruited in 1982 when their first-born children averaged 16 months of age.
