Longitudinal Associations Among Low-Income Fathers’ Resilience and Nonresidence During Early Childhood and Involvement During Adolescence

The present study examined longitudinal associations among low-income fathers’ resilience, father-mother residential status during early childhood, and adolescents’ perception of father involvement. We tested five hypotheses to analyze the relationships between fathers’ social systems resilience in early childhood (coparenting support, social support, and neighborhood quality), fathers’ individual resilience in early childhood (father employment in the labor force and father education), father-mother residential status in early childhood (co-residence at age 3 but not at age 5, co-residence at age 5 but not at age 3, and nonresidence at age 3 and age 5), and adolescents’ perception of father involvement (based on father accessibility, father engagement, and father-child relationship quality). Control variables included father risk in early childhood (father incarceration, father poverty, and father material hardship) and socio-demographic variables (father engagement in early childhood, father age, and father race/ethnicity). Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study ( N = 2,477), we found that father education was significantly associated with adolescents perceiving higher levels of father involvement at age 15. Moderation analyses indicated that when fathers who were co-resident at age 3 but not at age 5 reported higher coparenting support at age 3, adolescents indicated significantly lower levels of father involvement at age 15. Implications for future research are discussed.