The Influence of Fathers on Infant Development

In this chapter, we synthesize the available empirical evidence, drawn primarily from the United States, on the influence of fathers on children’s development during the early years of life (birth to age 3). Our research begins in the 1990s and includes studies that measured a child development outcome as the dependent variable to highlight the literature that explicitly examines the effects of fathers on child development. We organize this chapter as follows. We first present a short discussion on the theoretical and methodological approaches that have been used to conceptualize and assess fathers’ contributions to infant development. We do so because it will give the reader a good idea about the types of evidence we need to have to make theoretically based conclusions about father effects. Next, we discuss the empirical evidence that focuses on fathers’ direct impact on children’s social and emotional, language, cognitive, pre-academic, and physical development. We then discuss the individual- and family-level characteristics that explain some of the variation in fathering behaviors. We conclude with a summary and discussion of future directions.