Longitudinal Impacts of the Father-Child Relationship on Adjustment: Developmental and Dynamic Change

Increasingly, studies have underscored the unique positive effects of fathers on their children, with findings highlighting characteristics of the father-child relationship that uniquely contribute to positive development. Limited research has expanded this study into mid-childhood through adolescence, and fewer studies have incorporated mother data to examine the potential for father-specific effects. Prior work on the unique effects of fathers has focused almost exclusively on between-person relationships between fathering and child outcomes. Almost no research has examined the within-person question associated with developmental processes. Additionally, the characteristics and quality of the father-child relationship may change across development. Within these larger scale developmental changes, the quality of the father-child relationship may also vary based on day-to-day interactions between fathers and their children. Guided by these research gaps, the present study examined the relationship between paternal support and children’s internalizing problems, as well as the relationship between yearly and daily measures of youths’ relationships with their fathers, in a community sample of 299 mothers, fathers, and children (Mage = 10.68, SD = 2.40; range = 7 - 17) assessed over the course of 3 years. Comparative data from mothers was included, allowing for examination of whether each set of findings was father-specific. Based on the results of multilevel modeling utilizing person-mean centering, this study revealed father-specific between-and within-person effects of paternal support on youths’ internalizing problems. In particular, the within-person effect of paternal support was significant only for boys. Growth curve models revealed that paternal support increased over time. Dynamic structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationship between daily and yearly relationship quality. The results of these models indicated that fathers with more carryover in their relationship quality from one day to the next during wave 1 tended to have decreases in carryover across years. Additionally, fathers with lower yearly-level acceptance at wave 1 also tended to have more day-to-day carryover in their daily relationship with their children at wave 1. This pattern may suggest that maintaining consistent daily-level relationship quality does not result in high levels of trait-like acceptance, and that those with lower levels of paternal acceptance tended to, on average, also have consistently lower day-to-day relationship quality with their fathers. This study provided implications for research and practice related to fathering during adolescence, as well as several directions for future work.