Associations between mother and father involvement with older adolescents: Mediating effects of parent-adolescent and couple relationships

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to illuminate the dynamic interplay among subsystems within the family context to understand how mother and father involvement in their adolescent children's lives may be related. Background: Consistent with different predictions offered by family spillover and by compensatory conceptual models, whether there is an association between mother and father involvement, as well as the direction of the association, is unclear thus far in the empirical literature. Whether more proximal dyadic relationships, such as parent–adolescent relationships, may mediate the association between mother and father involvement has also been underexamined. Method: This study was conducted using the adolescent subsample drawn from Wave 3 of the Welfare, Children, and Families Project. A total of 463 ethnically diverse adolescents from low-income households living with two biological parents were involved in this study. Results: Results of a structural equation modeling analysis indicated that the total effect from mother involvement to father involvement was significant, but a direct association between them was not significant; closeness in parent–adolescent and coparental relationships mediated the relationship between the two. Study results also indicated that model fits and associations were roughly the same across adolescent sex and ethnicity groups. Conclusion: This study advanced the understanding of the father involvement process. The findings support that parental involvement interventions for parents from low-income families should focus on developing culturally responsive strategies for promoting their parenting beliefs and healthy functioning.