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Non-Resident Fathers' Relationships with Their Secondary School Age Children: Determinants and Children's Mental Health Outcomes

NCJ Number
215482
Journal
Journal of Adolescence Volume: 29 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2006 Pages: 525-538
Author(s)
Eirini Flouri
Date Published
August 2006
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This British study explored the determinants of and mental health outcomes of secondary school-age children from their non-resident fathers’ relationships with them.
Abstract
This study showed that child-reported non-resident father’s involvement was positively related to child-reported mother’s involvement, and negatively related to interpersonal conflict. However, because the data were cross-sectional, it was not clear if this indeed meant that fathers were engaged with their children because they thought the child’s mother had the child’s best interests at heart or that for children mother’s involvement and father’s involvement were strongly interrelated be the parents co-resident or not. In contrast to the strong evidence for the positive effects of non-resident fathers’ payment of child support evidence for the effects of non-residents fathers’ contact for children was weak. With that said, this study explored predictors from different groups of influence (child’s characteristics, mother’s involvement, contextual factors, and quality of the co-parental relationship) on aspects of non-resident fathers’ relationship with their adolescent children. Data were gathered from 520 British secondary school age children. The study measure utilized was the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Tables, references