Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2020

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Cooperating University

University of Kentucky

Department

Social Work

Degree Program

Social Work, PhD

Committee Chair

Perry, Armon

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Rote, Sunshine

Committee Member

Rote, Sunshie

Committee Member

Sterrett-Hong, Emma

Committee Member

Karam, Eli

Committee Member

Royse, David

Author's Keywords

Father; coparenting; school; fragile families and child wellbeing

Abstract

Historically, measures of coparenting have been reported by mothers. As a result, fathers’ perspectives and experiences have largely been excluded from this body of research. In response, this study relies on fathers own report of coparenting support. This study used a sample of 1255 biological fathers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to explore fathers’ reports of their coparenting support and how this is associated with relationship status with mother, time spent with child, and several school success variables including: internalizing and externalizing school behaviors and math and reading assessment scores at child age 9. Hypotheses included that higher coparenting reports would be positively associated with married and romantic cohabitating fathers as well as fathers who spent more time with their child. Additionally, it was hypothesized that higher father coparenting reports would predict lower internalizing and externalizing behaviors and increased reading and math scores. While support was found for relationship status and time spent with child coparenting hypotheses, there was little support for the school variables to be significantly predicted by coparenting reports. Two control variables (race/ethnicity and poverty to income level) did yield consistent results for predicting school outcome variables. Future research should continue to focus on the equity of how coparenting is measured and reported and how the coparenting relationship is significant in healthy child development.

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