Keywords

The target deadline of the Millennium Declaration, and the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG) as its practical and measurable articulation, was reached in 2015. Evaluations show that progress has been made in improving child outcomes worldwide (Hulme, 2009), although readers have to be aware that the picture is most likely too rosy, given that mental and emotional disorders among young children often go undetected (Lyons-Ruth et al., 2017). Despite progress, the MDGs have also left some major issues on the table. Some of the most important, and challenging ones, are SES inequalities, i.e., inequalities in (children’s) social, behavioral, emotional, cognitive, psychological, and financial outcomes by socioeconomic status. The MDGs focus on average progress measured at the country and global level has masked inequalities that lie behind these averages (Kabeer, 2010): studies show that even in countries where there has been progress toward the MDGs, inequalities in child outcomes have grown. Realizing that the issue of inequality has been neglected, the post-2015 development agenda has prioritized combating inequality (UN, 2012; Save the Children, 2012). Scholarly attention for the issue of inequality, in the last decade, has been directed toward obtaining a better understanding of how social (dis)advantages are transmitted inter-generationally to children. There is now consensus in the literature that the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages from parents onto their children is often filtered through intra-familial dynamics, in particular parenting (Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010; Ermisch, Jantti, & Smeeding, 2012; Kalil, 2014; Lareau, 2000; McLanahan, 2004; Putnam, 2015). Parenting creates a largely unseen but distinct division line between families, leading to widening gaps in social mobility and inequality that may last for generations (Kalil & Mayer, 2016; McLanahan, 2004; Putnam, 2015).

Historically, studies that have examined the impact of parenting on inequality in child outcomes have mainly focused on mothers (Augustine, Cavanagh, & Crosnoe, 2009; Augustine, Prickett, & Kimbro, 2016; Hsin & Felfe, 2014; Kalil, Ryan, & Corey, 2012; Milkie, Nomaguchi, & Denny, 2015). We know comparatively little about how inequalities develop through father’s parenting. This is startling, given that current demographic trends may exacerbate in particular fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. Father involvement has become, and much more so than maternal involvement, increasingly polarized (Edin, Tach, & Nelson, 2014; Furstenberg Jr., 1988; Settersten & Cancel-Tirado, 2010). Specifically, higher educated fathers, who have significant skills and resources, flexible jobs, and stable families, are increasingly able to expand their fathering roles beyond breadwinning, and these men are also more likely to adhere to norms of intensive parenting. Lower educated men, on the other hand, have been retreating from their roles as fathers altogether (Perelli-Harris et al., 2011; Roy, 2014). This suggests that deriving benefits from fathers’ parenting might have increasingly become a higher social class privilege (Settersten & Cancel-Tirado, 2010) and, therefore, fathers’ parenting may play a pivotal role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

In this chapter, I argue that much can be learned about the influence fathers have on their children’s development and, more specifically, about how inequalities in child outcomes develop through fathers’ parenting, by linking sociological stratification questions to developmental psychology research on father involvement. The chapter will start with a review of the sociological literature on fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. Then, I review developmental psychological/pedagogical literature on the role of father-child interactions in child development. Subsequently, I will briefly discuss two existing theories that have integrated sociological and developmental psychological insights on the role of parents in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages, and I will show what these theories have taught us so far about fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. Finally, I will elaborate on the limitations of these existing theories and provide suggestions for future theoretical developments on fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

The Role of Fathers in the Sociological Stratification Literature

Theory

A sociological perspective on fathers’ roles in children’s lives assumes that fathers influence their children’s development primarily via the intergenerational transmission of economic, social, and cultural resources. These resources are unequally generated and distributed across families, and differ by socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status (SES) is a combined economic and sociological measure of a person’s economic and social position in relation to that of others, based on income, education, and occupational status. Traditionally, scholars have solely used fathers’ SES as indicator of family SES, given that many mothers, until the 1960s, were not active on the labor market or had to leave the labor force once they entered marriage and/or became pregnant.

Prevailing sociological theories on how parental SES may contribute to inequalities in child outcomes rely either on a parental investment model (i.e., parental investment of time and money) and/or on a socialization/social reproduction model (i.e., parental or school socialization through modeling or teaching). When investigating the influence of parents’ SES, scholars often, based on the work of Bourdieu (1986), differentiate between the economic, social, and cultural aspects of SES. Bourdieu argued that positions in the social world can best be ordered according to differences in the amount and composition of economic, social, and cultural capital. Economic capital refers to the benefits that individuals or families have accumulated by virtue of having money, property, and/or wealth. With respect to economic capital, fathers with higher SES can advance their children’s outcomes by providing them with financial resources (i.e., being able to pay tuition for private schooling, being able to pay for piano lessons or sport memberships). Social capital refers to the benefits accruing to individuals or families by virtue of their ties with others. With respect to social capital, fathers with higher SES can be involved in clubs or are members of certain associations that help their children move higher up the socioeconomic ladder. Finally, cultural capital refers to people’s knowledge, intellectual skills, social abilities, norms, and values that provide advantages in achieving a higher social status in society. With respect to cultural capital, fathers with higher SES status can help their children do well in school by familiarizing them with those actions and content (i.e., museums, books, and digital media) that are valued in the educational system. In particular, with respect to differences in cultural capital, scholars have argued and shown that parents with different levels of SES hold different values related to childrearing (e.g., Kohn, 1963) and differ in how they parent their children (Lareau, 2002).

Kohn showed that parents transfer values that are appreciated in the workforce to their children. In middle- and higher-class jobs, skills such as intellectual stimulation and independent decision-making are desired. As a consequence, middle and higher social class parents internalize “self-direction” in their behavior, and, albeit consciously or unconsciously, socialize their children in these skills. Lower class jobs often require skills such as conformity to rules and requirements; skills that are subsequently internalized and passed on to their children. Lareau (2000) showed that parents from higher social classes are more aware of the importance of time investments in cultivating children’s human and social capital. Using data collected from extensive fieldwork among 88 white and black children from middle class, working class, and poor families, Lareau (2002) argued that middle and higher class families engage in concerted cultivation: engaging in deliberate efforts to facilitate their children’s development by enrolling them in several leisure activities, by engaging in active parenting that includes intervening and advocating on their child’s behalf in social institutions, and by creating a cognitive stimulating home environment using language games and educational material (i.e., books). An important advantage of this form of parenting is that children learn how to get along with both adults and same-age peers through organized activities. In addition, children develop a “sense of entitlement”: they have experiences in which their opinions matter and are taken into consideration. Lower class families, on the other hand, rely to a greater extent on natural growth: They perceive children’s development as more spontaneous, and thus create a relatively less orchestrated environment. Lower class children participate less in organized activities and spend more of their free time with other children in the neighborhood. They learn how to get along with each other on the street, often outside the realm of parental supervision. The desired attitude with respect to adults and parents is that of obedience. Whereas both approaches to parenting have their advantages, Lareau argues that schools’ expectations of the parental role are more in line with concerted cultivation. The parenting practices of middle/higher social class parents thus generate behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes that are relatively more beneficial for their children’s developmental and life outcomes.

In sum, a sociological perspective on fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages assumes that fathers influence their children’s development primarily via the intergenerational transmission of economic, social, and cultural capital. This capital is unequally generated and distributed across families, and differs by SES. As such, from a sociological perspective, fathers can play a key role in stratification processes, as fathers socialize their children into their class positions. Below I will provide a short overview of recent findings on linkages between fathers’ SES, fathers’ parental involvement, and child outcomes.

Empirical Findings for Linkages Between Fathers’ SES, Fathers’ Parental Involvement, and Child Outcomes

SES is a construct that captures various dimensions of a person’s economic and social position, including prestige, power, and economic well-being. There is consensus among scholars that income, education, and occupational status provide adequate coverage of these dimensions (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). Scholars have argued that each of these dimensions demonstrates different levels of stability across time and differentially predicts family processes and child adjustment (Duncan & Magnuson, 2003).

When scholars use the theoretical framework in which parenting practices are conceptualized as class-specific cultural practices, most attention has been devoted to parents’ educational attainment. Given that in most societies mothers still shoulder childcare responsibilities and are often the primary caretaker (e.g., Dermott, 2015; Doucet, 2013, most of these studies have investigated how mothers’ educational attainment socializes children into their class positions. There are relatively fewer studies that have investigated the role that fathers’ educational attainment plays. Nevertheless, there is empirical evidence that fathers’ educational attainment is related to fathers’ parental involvement. Several studies have shown that highly educated fathers are more involved in both developmental and routine childcare activities than their lower-educated counterparts (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; Hook & Wolfe, 2012; Marsiglio, 1991). A recent study by Altintas (2016) showed that higher-educated fathers spend significantly more time in developmental childcare activities, and that the gap between high- and low-educated parents’ time investment in developmental childcare activities has widened over the years. In line with these findings, Gracia (2014) showed that father’s education had a significant positive effect on his physical care when the youngest child was aged 0–5 and a significant positive effect in his interactive care, especially in teaching activities, when the youngest child was aged 3–5 years. Studies also show that higher educated fathers are more likely to read to their children (Cabrera, Hofferth, & Chae, 2011; Duursma, Pan, & Raikes, 2008; Malin et al., 2012) and have more frequent interactions than can be characterized as playful (e.g., Grossmann et al., 2002). Although most of these studies have been conducted in high-income countries, similar findings are found in low- and middle-income countries. Using data from 98,464 three- and four-year-old children in 44 low- and middle-income countries, Jeong, McCoy, and Fink (2017) found robust associations between both fathers’ education levels and children’s development scores. Controlling for the impact of mothers’ education and mothers’ provision of support for learning, they found that fathers’ provision of support for learning (i.e., books, stimulating interactions) was a key mechanism through which parental education relates to children’s development. Finally, although most of the abovementioned findings pertain to young children, studies have also revealed that higher-educated fathers are more engaged in their adolescent children’s academic activities than lower-educated ones (e.g., Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001). When scholars use the theoretical framework in which SES is linked with time investments in children, scholars have often turned to employment status and employment hours. Again, most of the literature has focused on mothers. The literature on linkages between fathers’ employment and father involvement is inconclusive. There are studies that find a negative association between employment and father involvement (Roeters, Lippe, & Kluwer, 2009), but others find no or only very weak associations between fathers’ employment and time spent with children (Hook & Wolfe, 2012; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). McGill (2014) showed in her study that fathers’ work hours were negatively related to father involvement, albeit only with respect to physical care for children. Fathers’ work hours did not have an impact on the level of responsibility the father took for caring for his child, nor did it impact the amount of time farther spent in play or activity-related activities with his child. The sparse literature on linkages between paternal employment and child outcomes is also inconclusive (Parcel & Menaghan, 1994; Harvey, 1999). However, moderation effects are found. For example, Harvey showed that for low-income families, fathers’ working more hours tended to be associated with higher language scores for children, whereas the opposite was true for high-income families. These somewhat counterintuitive findings suggest that fathers’ work hours imply different things for families with different levels of income. When families have difficulties making ends meet, fathers’ increased work hours may benefit their children’s outcomes as increased work hours implies more (much needed) income, whereas for families that have no difficulties making ends meet, increased work hours may be detrimental for children’s outcomes, as increased work hours implies that fathers can spend less time with their children. Given the lack of direct effects for paternal employment, scholars are turning to other occupational measures for fathers. A recent study by Gracia (2012) showed that fathers employed in post-industrial occupations are more involved in childcare and socio-cultural activities with children than those employed in industrial occupations.

When scholars use the theoretical framework in which SES is associated with financial resources, they have used measures of family income or combined measures of educational attainment and occupational status with income to construct an overall SES index. Only rarely do studies investigate the individual contribution of fathers’ income to paternal involvement or child outcomes across the entire spectrum of the income distribution. However, scholars have investigated paternal involvement among low-income fathers (e.g., Bocknek, Brophy-Herb, Fitzgerald, Schiffman, & Vogel, 2014; Cabrera, Ryan, Mitchell, Shannon, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008; Duursma et al., 2008). With notable exceptions, these studies on low-income fathers often pertain to non-resident fathers, making it difficult to assess differences in the impact of low- versus high-income fathers, given that the nature of their involvement often differs substantially (daily interactions of resident fathers versus child support payment and face to face contact of non-resident fathers). Nevertheless, there is consensus in the literature that fathers’ financial resources enable families, among others, to afford houses in safer neighborhoods and to buy nutritious food, which in turn predict desirable childhood outcomes, including cognitive skills (Cabrera & Peters, 2000).

Limitations of a Sociological Perspective on Fathers’ Role in the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality

Although the abovementioned sociological perspectives underscore that fathers with higher SES status have more resources to invest in their children’s developmental outcomes and that their socialization practices prepare their children better for positions higher on the societal ladder, neither of the two sociological perspectives engages with the emotional and/or relational aspects of parenting. This limits our understanding of the processes through which inequalities are transmitted across generations (see for similar criticism Moulin, Waldfogel, & Washbrook, 2017).

In contrast, developmental psychologists argue that fathers influence their children’s development exactly through those characteristics that sociologists have neglected: via the quality of the interactions fathers have with their children. For a full and comprehensive understanding of the processes through which fathers transmit (dis)advantages onto the next generation, we need to complement the ones that we have derived from the sociological literature with those from the developmental psychological/pedagogical literature.

The Role of the Father in the Developmental Psychology/Pedagogical Literature

Theory

Although fathers have always played a central role in the sociological stratification literature, the role of fathers in their children’s lives has only relatively recently gained ground in the developmental psychology/pedagogical literature. In these fields, parenting research has typically focused on questions regarding what mothers do with, and for, their children, and what influence maternal involvement has on children’s development. The importance of father involvement only came into focus in the early 1970s (Lamb & Lewis, 2013). At that time, paternal involvement was operationalized most frequently in terms of co-residence: fathers’ presence in the child’s household. The next generation of scholars refined the definition of father involvement, defining it in terms of time spent with the child, regardless of the type of activities undertaken. Little evidence was found, however, for a significant link between fathers’ total amount of time spent with children and child development. Subsequently, fathering research gradually shifted toward conceptualizing father involvement as father’s direct engagement with the child, through caretaking and other shared activities that might potentially promote child development (Pleck, 2007). Over time, the notion of the father as a co-parent gained ground (Pleck & Pleck, 1997), according to which fathers share the responsibilities of childrearing with mothers. To keep pace with flouring conceptualizations of fatherhood, research on father involvement evolved to encompass qualitative dimensions as well, including warmth and control (or: demandingness; Maccoby & Martin, 1983; Pleck, 2004). As readers might be able to tell from this brief description of historical developments in the field, the literature on fathers’ role in child development has mainly been guided by societal questions, demographic developments, and empirical findings. Empirical studies on fathers’ role in child development are abundant, but there are not many overarching theoretical perspectives to specifically “frame the conceptualization of fathering as an activity and of fatherhood as a status” (Lewis & Lamb, 2007, page 3), but see Pleck (2007) for a short overview of theoretical perspectives on fathers’ influences on child development. I will therefore discuss more general frameworks on the quality of parent-child interactions below to understand the processes that underlie the influence of fathers on their children’s lives.

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1986) ecological perspective on human development is one of the most commonly used frameworks to understand child development. In his model, different systems are identified that are nested within each other and that each has, by themselves, but also in interaction, an influence on children’s development. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory describes that children first and foremost develop through interactions with their immediate environment in the microsystem (i.e., proximal processes). As such, the quality of caregiver-child interactions is of the utmost importance in defining children’s everyday experiences and in explaining developmental outcomes. In general, it is argued that high-quality parent-child interactions—characterized by sensitive and supportive parents who provide security and confidence—help children flourish, regardless of parents’ gender. Sensitive parents are those parents who are able to perceive and to interpret accurately the signals and communications implicit in their infant’s behavior, and given this understanding, to respond to them appropriately and promptly (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 2015). In contrast, parent-child interactions that are characterized as harsh, intrusive, or neglectful (rather than warm, and responsive) are considered to be detrimental for children’s development.

Sensitivity is not only a central concept in the proximal processes described in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. It also plays a key role in attachment theory. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1982) is one of the most commonly used frameworks to understand how children’s (socio-emotional and behavioral) skills develop through the parent-child relationship in the first years of life. Attachment theory centralizes the “affectionate bond” between a caregiver and a child. This bond is activated in times of distress and becomes visible in the child’s preferential desire for proximity and/or contact with the caregiver. Attachment theory indicates that secure parent-child attachment relationships promote positive feelings of self-worth and importance (Sroufe, 2002; Thompson, 2006). More specifically, the trustworthy warmth of parents provides a foundation for children in infancy to develop mental representations of themselves (internal working model) as loveable and worthy of care. The trust generated by a supportive parent–child attachment relationship provides children with the confidence to explore and engage in new experiences while knowing that the parents’ assistance is available. The positive internal working model gained from this fosters cognitive development and skills acquisition as well as social and emotional development. At the core of attachment theory is the claim that infants not only become attached to their biological mother but also to other caregivers who interact regularly with them, including fathers.

There are scholars who have argued that mothers and fathers have distinct and complementary attachment roles; the mother-child attachment relationship is posited to primarily provide warmth and security, whereas exploration is posited to be more central to the father-child attachment relationship. For this reason, the father-child attachment relationship has been coined an “activation relationship” (Dumont & Paquette, 2013). Paquette (2004) states that while mothers play an important role in children’s need to be calmed and secured, the father-activation relationship satisfies the children’s need to be stimulated, to overcome limits, and to learn to take chances. According to this theory, fathers represent the outside world, and tend to encourage their children to take risks more often than mothers do. Fathers, more than mothers, may demand their children to express and think over their ideas, encourage them to take initiative, and teach them that it is okay to disagree with each other. By promoting their autonomy, fathers are argued to facilitate the process of becoming more agentic.

In sum, these developmental psychological/pedagogical theories assume that fathers influence their children’s development primarily via paternal sensitivity (the quality of father-child interactions) and (subsequently) via the nature and the quality of the father-child attachment and activation relationship.

Empirical Findings

There is general consensus in the literature that sensitive and supportive fathers have children who have fewer behavioral and emotional problems (for reviews see Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000; Lamb & Lewis, 2013). Furthermore, fathers’ sensitive and supportive interactions have been linked to higher cognitive and language development and school achievement of children (Cabrera, Shannon, & Tamis-Le-Monda, 2007; Malin, Cabrera, & Rowe, 2014; Pancsofar & Vernon-Feagans, 2010; Tamis-LeMonda, Baumwell, & Cabrera, 2013). In addition, multiple studies have shown that the quality of fathers’ interactions with their children is important for the development of empathy and social development in both sons and daughters (Leidy, Schofield, & Parke, 2013). In addition, research shows that the security of children’s attachments to both their mother and to their father impact children’s development, although there has been much less research on the impact of father-child than of mother-child attachment (Cowan & Cowan, 2019; see for a review Lamb & Lewis, 2013; Ranson & Urichuk, 2008). Some studies show that infant-mother attachments have more consistent predictive power than infant-father attachment, especially in two-parent families. Nevertheless, there is evidence that father-child and mother-child attachment both have independent and non-overlapping effects on children’s development (e.g., Buttitta et al., 2019; Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, & Pruett, 2019; Grossmann et al., 2002; see for a review Lamb & Lewis, 2013).

Other studies find evidence for the importance of the father-child activation relationship for child outcomes (e.g., Dumont & Paquette, 2013; Gaumon & Paquette, 2013; Paquette & Dumont, 2013). Gaumon and Paquette, for example, find that the more positively activated children were in their relationship with their father, the fewer internalizing disorders they displayed. Although these studies highlight the importance of the father-child activation relationship for children’s development, it is too preliminary to draw the conclusion that the activation relationship is unique to the father-child relationship, as the scholars involved in this line of work have not (yet) tested the importance of an equivalent mother-activation relationship for child outcomes.

Limitations of a Developmental Psychological/Pedagogical Perspective on Fathers’ Role in the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality

Although the abovementioned theories had close detail for the qualitative aspects of fathers’ parenting and parent-child relationships, and offer a model of the micro-level processes that connect fathers’ parenting processes to children’s developmental outcomes, it generally does not take structural opportunities and constraints into account. It therefore often underestimates the degree to which social forces shape psychological states (Settersten Jr., 2009). Attachment theory, for example, even though one of its aims is to explain intergenerational continuities in human development, neglects the social and economic contexts in which parent-child bonds are embedded (see Mesman, van Ijzendoorn, & Sagi-Schwarz, 2016; Moulin et al., 2017).

Nevertheless, there is an increasing awareness in the developmental psychological/pedagogical literature that socioeconomic circumstances should be taken into account (e.g., Mesman et al., 2016 in Handbook of Attachment, p. 869). This might especially be important for fathers, as previous studies have shown that fathering is influenced to a greater extent than mothering, by contextual factors in the family (e.g., Bureau et al., 2017). Recent studies indeed suggest that socioeconomic characteristics are in particular important for fathers’ quality of parenting. Teufl, Deichmann, Supper, and Ahnert (2019) showed that fathers’ education was related to father-child attachment security, whereas the same was not observed for mothers.Although scholars in the field of psychology have proposed insightful ecological models of human development (such as the abovementioned model by Bronfenbrenner) and father involvement in particular (e.g., Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2014), such models are frequently misused in empirical work, overlooking the complex interplay between proximal processes and context (Tudge, Mokrova, Hatfield, & Karnik, 2009). We need to more closely integrate insights from sociological stratification studies into the developmental psychology literature on fathers’ role in child outcomes, to be able to understand how inequalities in children’s developmental outcomes develop through fathers’ parenting. Below I will briefly discuss two existing theories that have integrated sociological and developmental psychological insights on the role of parents in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages, and I will show what these theories have taught us so far about fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. Finally, I will elaborate on the limitations of these existing theories and provide suggestions for future theoretical developments on fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

Existing theories that link SES to qualitative dimensions of fathers’ parenting and child development

In this section, I describe two existing theoretical models that have integrated sociological and developmental psychological insights on the role of parents in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages: the Family Stress Model (FSM) and the Interactionist Model of Socioeconomic Influence (IMSI). The Family Stress Model (e.g., Conger et al., 1992, 1993; Conger & Conger, 2002) posits that parenting reflects the influence of economic hardship. Stress and anxieties related to economic and financial struggles negatively affect the well-being of parents and strain the relationship between them. This heightened level of stress is then predicted to disrupt parenting, namely leading to harsher forms of parenting and hampering parental warmth and support. As such, economic hardship obstacles children’s development through disrupting parenting. Numerous studies have investigated each arrow in the causal model of the FSM (for reviews see Conger & Donnellan, 2007; Masarik & Conger, 2017). Scholars have shown that economic hardship increases depressive symptoms among parents, which leads to harsher parenting as well as lower parental warmth (Guo & Harris, 2000; Gershoff, Aber, Raver, & Lennon, 2007; Kiernan & Huerta, 2008; Turney, 2012; Rijlaarsdam et al., 2013; Treanor, 2016; Sosu & Schmidt, 2017). Harsh parenting and lower parental warmth, subsequently, are related to more detrimental developmental outcomes for children (e.g., Pinquart, 2017).

Most of these studies, however, have been restricted to mothers. This is quite unfortunate, as the studies that include both mothers and fathers suggest that fathers’ parenting practices may play a different role than mothers’ in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. For example, Karras (2015) showed that material hardship only had a direct impact on fathers’ symptoms of depression, while it had direct effects on both mothers’ symptoms of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, she showed that fathers’ parenting stress was related to his spanking behavior but not to his engagement with his child, while mothers’ parenting stress was related to both. Wadsworth et al. (2013) also found differential processes for fathers and mothers in testing the Adaptation to Poverty-related Stress Model. They showed that economic strain reductions were uniquely associated with increased positive father–child relationships only, where secondary control coping was uniquely associated with decreases in negative mother–child relationships only. Furthermore, they found an indirect effect of reduced economic strain on child symptoms via positive parent–child interactions for fathers only. This suggests that the processes through which SES, in particular economic hardship, influences parenting and subsequently child outcomes differ by parent’s gender. These findings underscore the importance of paying attention to the role that fathers, above and beyond mothers, play in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

One of the big advantages of the FSM is that it provides a theoretical model for how SES (here: economic hardship) influences mothers’ and fathers’ parenting quality and subsequently child outcomes. As such, it integrates sociological insights on stratification with the developmental psychology literature on causal linkages between SES, parenting, and child outcomes. Nevertheless, the focus of the FSM is quite restricted from the perspective of Bourdieu’s notion of economic, social, and cultural capital, as the focus is only put on the influence of a lack of economic capital. It is just as important and interesting to investigate to what extent the presence of economic, social, and cultural capital has on parenting quality and parent-child interactions and subsequently child outcomes.

This limitation is overcome in the Interactionist Model of Socioeconomic Influence (IMSI; Conger & Dogan, 2007 and Conger & Donnellan, 2007). The IMSI utilizes a broader lens on the influence of SES, and combines insights derived from both the parental involvement model and the family stress model to understand how SES through family processes influences child development. In addition to these two causal perspectives, it also incorporates a social selection perspective. The argument being that establishing a causal link that goes from SES to parenting to child outcomes requires accounting for selection effects as well. The model stresses the importance of controlling for characteristics of parents and children (e.g., parents’ own genes, personality traits, childhood experiences, children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills) that may influence both the adaptation of different parenting practices as well as the experience of economic hardship. A big advantage of this model is that it allows for interplays between individual attributes and socioeconomic conditions across time and across multiple generations (Martin et al., 2010).

Compared to the FSM, the IMSI is relatively more new. Nevertheless, several studies have unfolded demonstrating how social selection and causation both play a role in linkages between SES, parenting, and child outcomes (e.g., Martin et al., 2010; Schofeld et al., 2011; Conger, Martin, Masarik, Widaman, & Donnellan, 2015). These studies revealed that personality (Schofeld) and behavior characteristics (Conger; Martin) of first-generation family members influenced their own SES as an adult, their levels of family stress and parental emotional investments, and also the behavioral characteristics of their child. In addition, the study by Martin et al. (2010) showed that SES was related to family stress of the member of the first generation. The family stress of this person subsequently influenced his/her child’s behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, the adult SES of the first-generation family member influenced both material and emotional investments in his/her child. These material and emotional investments, in turn, predicted the behavioral outcomes of the child.

Accounting for selection effects, findings from studies applying the IMSI suggest that fathers play an important role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages, and they suggest that the processes differ between fathers and mothers. For example, the study by Martin et al. (2010) showed that the relationship between the first-generation family member’s behavioral characteristics and their own parental emotional investments was only there for fathers. The relationship between family stress experienced by the first-generation family member and behavioral characteristics of their child was only there for mothers. Finally, the association between material investments of the first-generation’s family member and their child’s behavioral characteristics was only there for fathers. Again, these findings hint to an important role played by fathers in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages and suggest that the processes that underlie the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages differ by fathers and mothers.

In sum, integrating insights from the sociological and the developmental psychology/pedagogical literature, both the FSM and the IMSI models highlight, although based on a relatively limited number of studies, that fathers play an important and sometimes different role compared to mothers, in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. More research that includes both mothers and fathers is needed to be able to draw a firm conclusion concerning the role that fathers play in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

The Complex Interplay Between Proximal Processes and Context: Limitations of Existing Models and Suggestions for Future Theoretical Developments

Although the FSM and the IMSI help us advance our understanding of the role that fathers play in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages, their conceptual models somewhat restrict us in the questions that we are able to answer about fathers’ role. Below I will mention these limitations and formulate five suggestions for future theoretical developments.

Moving Beyond Mediation: Interactions between Fathers’ SES and Parenting on Child Outcomes

The theoretical models mentioned above assume that the impact of the key characteristics in the model (personal characteristics, SES, family processes, child development) is unconditional. However, individuals (here: fathers) are active agents who not only mediate the effect of social structure but also make decisions and set goals that shape social structure. The ability to make specific choices or adapt to life events varies with people’s resources or supports in the form of economic, cultural, and social capital. Thus, even though in theory all individuals and families can construct, negotiate, and traverse life course events, experiences, and outcomes, some are more successful in doing so than others. This suggests that a mediational model (from SES to father’s parenting practices to child outcomes) may not suffice, as the effects of father involvement on child outcomes among low SES fathers are likely different from those among higher SES fathers, which implies moderation.

One the one hand, in line with the work of McLanahan’s (2004) and Kalil et al. (2012) notion of a “developmental gradient”, it can be argued that children from higher SES fathers benefit more from their fathers’ parental involvement and parenting practices compared to children from lower SES fathers. By means of their social, economic, and cultural capital, fathers with higher SES might be better able to adjust the activities and the arrangements they make for their children to the needs of their child (Kalil et al., 2012). Or, arguing from the perspective of lower SES fathers, poverty and lower levels of education, which are associated with parental stress and harsh parenting, may limit the benefits of low-SES fathers’ parental involvement and parenting practices for their children. Both ways of reasoning suggest that the same levels of parental involvement would yield greater returns for higher SES fathers in terms of their children’s development. In line with these ideas, several studies have revealed that the impact of personal characteristics and parenting practices on child outcomes may depend on the level of SES. For example, the study by Reeb, Conger, and Martin (2013) revealed that the level of perceived economic strain that fathers perceive exacerbates the effect of paternal depressed mood on their hostile parenting behaviors. The study by Cabus and Ariës (2017) showed that even though parents with low SES are as much involved in the education of their children as the average Dutch family, their involvement is less effective in terms of children’s learning outcomes.

On the other hand, fathers’ involvement among low SES families may be more beneficial than for those in higher-SES families, since children in higher SES families have numerous other advantages and resources to fall back on. In their bioecological model of human development, Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1994) posit that proximal processes in a child’s immediate environment—such as parental involvement—promote child development more strongly in disadvantaged environments because the children in them have the most to gain. In this light, recent studies have revealed that fathers’ parenting practices could offset the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on children’s cognitive outcomes (Hango, 2005). Future studies should follow up on this observation and investigate to what extent fathers’ parenting practices might actually mitigate or strengthen the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

Moving Beyond Mothers’ and Fathers’ Independent Contributions

In the developmental and pedagogical literature, there is consensus that father-child relationships do not exist in a vacuum, but are instead contingent on other family relationships (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2014) and that the impact of father-child relationships on child development should be investigated while taking the larger family system into account (e.g., Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2007; Cabrera et al., 2014; Malmberg & Flouri, 2011; Sameroff & MacKenzie, 2003; Schacht, Cummings, & Davies, 2009). However, when investigating the role of parents in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage, this insight has unfortunately not yet been fully incorporated. But please see the branch of literature that focuses on the intergenerational transmission of aggression and more broadly psychopathology for a notable exception (e.g., Ellis, Zucker, & Fitzgerald, 1997; Fitzgerald & Eiden, 2007).

First, scholars often take the SES of the parent with the highest SES as the indicator of the entire family or use family-level indicators of poverty, overlooking what these characteristics for each of the two parents look like. Because of increased educational homogamy (Cherlin, 2010; Komter, Keizer, & Dykstra, 2012), socioeconomic inequalities are more likely to be compounded within households, concentrating all maternal and paternal (dis)advantages on the same children. These trends have led to increased inequality in the availability, and quality of the investments, of (extended) family members (Mare, 2011), which is posed to be a major factor in the widening inequality among children (Esping-Andersen, 2015; Heckman, 2006). For a clear understanding of the role fathers play in passing on (dis)advantages, it is therefore not only important to know the socioeconomic background of fathers themselves, but also to take these characteristics of mothers into account.

Second, when investigating the role of fathers in child development from a family system perspective, scholars often merely control for the influence of mothers or take co-parental characteristics into account (see for a review, Cabrera, Volling, & Barr, 2018). As others have also stressed (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018), and in light of our quest to better understand how parents transmit (dis)advantages onto their children, it would be more informative to see the integrative effect of mother-child attachment and father-child attachment on child development. Furthermore, a family system perspective would allow scholars to ascertain how fathers and mothers via dynamics such as marital conflict transmit inequality onto their children.

Moving Beyond Unidimensional or Aggregated Measures of SES

In order to fully understand how inequalities develop via fathers’ parenting practices, it is crucial to disaggregate the different indicators of SES. As mentioned earlier, SES is a multidimensional construct capturing prestige, power, and economic well-being. There is consensus among scholars that income, education, and occupational status provide adequate coverage of these dimensions (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). Unfortunately, scholars have often restricted themselves to using only one indicator of SES or compiling an aggregate measure. Only by disaggregating income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige, are we able to examine whether and through which pathways (i.e., parental investment versus family stress model) fathers’ parenting practices mediate the link between SES and child outcomes.

Moving Beyond Infancy and Early Childhood

As children grow up and develop, behaviors within the parent-child relationship also require change in order to meet the new needs of the child. Parenting practices that might have been beneficial in infancy could be inappropriate or counter-effective in middle childhood and/or adolescence. The extent to which parents are able to adjust their involvement and monitor the child is largely based on parents’ social, economic, and cultural capital (Kalil et al., 2012). Parents from lower social classes might have fewer abilities to monitor their children and to adjust their involvement accordingly. These findings suggest that, over time, a Matthew effect might occur (Merton, 1968), with better-off fathers, being able to remain a positive influence on their children by adequately monitoring their children, and adjusting the quantity and quality of their parenting to the changing needs of the child. Studies so far have often focused on early childhood. We need to incorporate a wider time span in order to be able to understand whether fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of inequality actually becomes stronger over the years.

Moving Beyond Micro-level Processes: The Importance of Country Context

Theoretical models such as the FSM and the IMSI leave little room for the influence of macro contextual variables. This is unfortunate, as the extent to which inequalities in child outcomes produced by differences in fathers’ parenting practices are mitigated might also strongly depend on the country context, in particular the extent to which policies address inequity in the resources families have to properly develop their children’s potential (Cooke & Baxter, 2010; Esping-Andersen, 2015; Saraceno & Keck, 2010). Policies create conditions which may mitigate or strengthen social inequality (Garbarino, Governale, & Kostelny, 2019; Javornik, 2014). It is essential to know whether policies involve payments for care, (paid) leave, or the provision of care services, as the specific combinations of the items that make up policy packages create different options for parents, different possible experiences for children, and they define different responsibilities between mothers and fathers, and between families and society (Saraceno, 2011). When public support is offered in money rather than in kind, families use it to buy help or to augment the family budget while providing care directly. This tradeoff is likely different in families with different socioeconomic circumstances (e.g., Gornick & Meyers, 2008; Leitner, 2003). For example, the less compensated parental leave, the more it produces polarized behaviors among parents, mostly based on social class/education (Korpi, 2000; Saraceno, 2011). In the absence of generous paid paternity leave, mainly high SES fathers are capable to take short periods of (part-time) leave (Korpi, 2000). In line with this idea, research has shown that throughout developed countries, higher educated fathers are more involved in childcare and are more likely to take up paternity leave (Boll, Leppin, & Reich, 2013; Geisler & Kreyenfeld, 2018). It is important to take national context into account when investigating the role of fathers in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages, as effective national polices (e.g., a child-related leave that is accompanied by generous financial benefits could) have the potential to equalize the leave uptake among fathers with different socioeconomic background and consequently lead to fewer social class disparities in children’s resources and development. In this light, studies are encouraged to investigate to what extent and how country context buffers or strengthens fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages.

Summary and Key Points

Fathers play an important role in children’s lives—that is something that all researchers, regardless of their disciplinary background, agree on. However, the perspective on the roles that fathers play differs between disciplines. A sociological perspective on fathers’ role assumes that fathers influence their children’s development primarily via the intergenerational transmission of economic, social, and cultural resources. These resources are unequally generated and distributed across families, and differ by SES. From a sociological perspective, fathers play a key role in stratification processes, as fathers socialize their children into their class positions. In contrast to the emphasis on investment and socialization, developmental psychological/pedagogical studies focus on fathers’ role in the emotional and/or relational aspects of parenting assuming that fathers influence their children’s development primarily via paternal sensitivity (the quality of father-child interactions) and via the nature and the quality of the father-child attachment and activation relationship. In this chapter, I have argued that we need both perspectives to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the role that fathers play in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. I have showed that theoretical models of FSM and IMSI have successfully integrated both perspectives, albeit with limited success when it comes to the understanding of the role that fathers play in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. This is partly related to the fact that most empirical studies are still restricted to mothers. When studies do take the roles of both mothers and fathers into account, there is suggestive evidence that the processes that underlie the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages differ between fathers and mothers. However, more research is needed to obtain a more accurate understanding of fathers’ role in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. In this chapter, I have suggested five research avenues that may help us in accomplishing just that.

We need to:

  • Move beyond mediation and assess interactions between fathers’ SES and parenting on child outcomes

  • Move beyond mothers’ and fathers’ independent contributions and truly take a family system perspective

  • Move beyond unidimensional or aggregated measures of SES

  • Move beyond infancy and early childhood

  • Move beyond micro-level processes and assess the importance of country context

Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the role that fathers play in the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages is not only important from a scientific perspective, but also from a societal one, in particular given that studies have revealed that it is easier to improve the average level of child outcomes, rather than reduce inequality between social groups in a given society (e.g., Kabeer, 2010). Understanding how inequalities in child outcomes are developed through fathers’ parenting practices, and the extent to which micro-, meso-, and macro-level characteristics influence this development, will provide novel input for better-tailored policies to reduce inequality in child outcomes.