The Jmnd of Genetic Psychology, 1979, 1S5, 51-61.
INFANT DEVELOPMENT I N FATHER-ABSENT FAMILIES*' National Institute of Child Health and Human DcvclopmGnt
FRANK A. PEDERSEN,JUDITH L. RUBENSTEIN,'AND LEONJ. YARROW SUMMARY In a sample of 55 black infants (age 5-6 months) living in the inner city in lower socioeconomic circumstances, 2 7 infants were being reared by their mothers in single-parent families. Male infants who had experienced minimal interaction with their fathers were significantly lower on the Bayley Mental Developmental Index and in measures of social responsiveness, secondary circular reactions, and preferences for novel stimuli. Female infants in this sample appeared unaffected by the father's presence or absence. After weighing alternative interpretations of the findings, we conclude that the father is a significant component in the early environment and that both observational studies and conceptual development of the role of the father in infancy are needed.
INTRODUCTION Bronfenbrenner (l), citing information from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, has recently called attention to the fact that one American child in six is a member of a single-parent family. In the important early years (under three) 13% of all Americans are reared by a single parent, usually the mother. Undoubtedly the experiences of children in one-parent families differ from those in families with a father as well as a mother. Several studies have indicated that father absence significantly influences children's cognitive and personality development. For example, Deutsch and Brown (4) reported significantly lower ZQ scores for first-grade black children reared in father-absent circumstances compared with their father-present peers. A.
* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on March 1 7 , 1978. Copyright, 1979, by The Journal Press. The authorj wish to thank Joseph Jankowski and Richard Cain, Jr. for their contributions to the data collection and analyses. * The present affiliation of the second author is Tufts New England Medical Center Hospital.
51
52
JOURNAL OF GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
While single-parent families headed by the mother usually have lower economic resources than two-parent families, Deutsch and Brown presented evidence for father absence having an affect on ZQ that was greater than that attributable to socioeconomic factors alone. Some studies ( 2 , 3 ) have also suggested that father absence occurring early in life (before three years) is of greater consequence than father absence occurring later, although outcome measures have been obtained characteristically at primary school age or later. In this investigation we studied the cognitive, social and motivational development of infants (age 5-6 months) in father-absent families, comparing them with infants reared in father-present environments. There has been very little conceptual thinking about the role of the father in the preidentification period. This lack of conceptualization may derive from our matricentric view of child rearing, the assumption that the father has no great impact on the developing infant, but there has heretofore been no empirical test of this assumption. Evidence of any influence of the father upon development is therefore relevant to our basic theoretical assumptions regarding the early environment.
B.
METHOD
1. Context of This Study
The analyses reported in this investigation derive from a larger study of environmental influences on development reported in detail elsewhere (8). The larger investigation included home observations of the infant’s primary caregiver, typically the infant’s mother, but also including other people such as grandmothers, aunts, or unrelated baby-sitters. Where it is appropriate, data from the larger investigation will be presented even though it is beyond the scope of this report to provide complete details of the methodology. 2.
Sample
The sample consisted of 55 black full term infants (28 males and 2 7 females) recruited through two public well-baby clinics in the Washington, D.C., area. All infants were healthy based upon pediatric and neurological screening examinations. Twenty-five infants were firstborn and 3 0 were later born. The mean age of the mothers was 23.1 years (range: 16 to 41) and their mean educational attainment was 10.8 years of school completed (range: 7 to 13 years). All families were living in the inner city in economic circumstances that ranged from poverty to lower-middle-class levels. Many
FRANK A. PEDERSEN, JUDITH RUBENSTEIN, AND LEON J. YARROW
53
households included extended family such as grandparents and aunts. There was a mean of 2.9 adults residing in each household even though approximately half of the families did not include the father. 3 . Detemzination of Father-Absent Families
The sample was classified dichotomously into father-absent or fatherpresent families based on the mother’s response to questions concerning household members. These questions were asked on several occasions by a research pediatrician and a home observer when the infant was between three and five months of age, the period when these staff members had contact with the family. The focus of the questions was on the full range of people who came in contact with the infant and, if the father was not mentioned spontaneously, direct inquiry was made. The classification was not based on marital status; father-absent families included instances where the father was out of town for a protracted period because of military service or other employment as well as separations due to family discord and conflict. By virtue of the ongoing relationship with the research staff, there is reasonable certainty that there was accurate reporting. Eighteen of the 2 8 male infants and nine of the 2 7 females were classified father-absent. The association between sex of infant and single-parent status is statistically significant (x2= 4.08, p < .05); male infants in this sample were more likely to be from father-absent families. This finding is in itself curious. Whether it is psychologically important or is merely a sampling factor, there is an important methodological implication. The effects of father absence must be analyzed separately by sex of infant so that possible sex differences in infant behavior are not confounded with differences associated with father absence. 4.
Measure of Father Contact
It is apparent that a simple measure of household membership does not fully describe the father’s relationship with his child. In this sample, there were a few instances where the father, although living elsewhere, was described as having some degree of interaction with the baby associated with his relationship with the mother. In addition, there were instances of fathers living in the home who had very little contact with their infants. In order to deal with this information, a second measure was developed which was a more refined scale describing the father’s amount of interaction with the infant. This five point rating, based upon the mother’s report, ranges from no contact with the infant through daily interaction involving both play and
54
JOURNAL OF GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
caregiving activities. Interrater agreement, expressed as a correlation between independent judgments from the interviewer’s summary, was .96. There is a rank order correlation of .76 between this rating, amount of interaction with the infant, and the dichotomous classification of father absence or presence, indicating that there is slightly different information in the two variables. 5 . Infant Functioning There were 16 measures of infant functioning obtained at 5 to 6 months of age in two different sessions with different male examiners. In the first session, the Bayley Tests of Infant Development were administered. This yielded the Mental and Psychomotor Developmental Indexes and eight clusters of items developed from the Bayley to measure social, motor, and cognitive-motivational development in a more differentiated manner. After the Bayley, a special set of four test items was given to measure rudimentary problem-solving behavior. In the second session, a structured situational test was administered to obtain two measures of exploratory behavior and two measures of preference for novel stimuli. The measures of exploratory behavior were the amounts of time the infant spent in visual attention to and manipulation of a standard toy, a bell, presented for a 10-minute period. After this familiarization period, the bell was then paired for one-minute intervals with 10 different toys, ones with which the infant had no previous experience. Preferences for novel stimuli were measured by recording the amounts of time spent in visual and manipulative exploration of the novel toys compared to the familiar bell. One additional measure was also obtained from this procedure: the infant’s amount of vocalization during exploration was timed in the 10-minute period when the infant was free to inspect and manipulate the bell. A more extended discussion of these procedures and measures is available elsewhere ( 8 ) , but variables which were significantly related to the father will be discussed in greater detail in the context of the results. 6.
Data Analysis
The basic research question is whether there is evidence that infants reared in father-absent environments show developmental deficits. Allied to this issue is the question of whether the father’s amount of interaction with the infant, a more refined measure than the dichotomous classification, is related to early cognitive, social and motivational development. To answer the first question, the scores of the 16 measures of early development were
FRANK A. PEDERSEN, JUDITH RUBENSTEIN, AND LEON J. YARROW
55
compared for the father-absent and father-present groups separately for male and female infants. Because of skewed distributions on some of the measures, the Mann-Whitney U test, an appropriate nonparametric statistic, was used. For the second question, rank-order correlations were computed between the rating scale of paternal behavior and the infant measures.
c.
RESULTS AND
DISCUSSION
For female infants, there were no significant relationships between the father variables and any of the measures of infant functioning. Neither father absence nor amount of father interaction showed significant associations with the development of infant girls. The findings were quite different for the male infants. Fifteen out of the 16 measures of infant development were numerically lower in the father-absent group, and three of these differences were statistically significant (see Table 1). The rating, amount of father interaction with infant, yielded five significant correlations, four of which were significant at the one percent level. This measure has slightly stronger relationships with functioning (in male infants) than the more global classification of father absence versus father presence. The reason may be that this rating gives some indication of the intensity of the father’s relationship with the infant, a much more meaningful measure than simply whether he is living in the same house. The data indicate that the means on the Bayley Mental Developmental Index were higher for the father-present males and there is a significant correlation between amount of father interaction and the Bayley Mental Developmental Index. The Mental Developmental Index is best interpreted as a rather heterogeneous measure of early cognitive skills and motivational characteristics; more differentiated statements about the selective influence of the father’s relationship on male infants is possible from the clusters derived from the Bayley. Father-present male infants were significantly higher on a cluster of eight Bayley items measuring social responsiveness. This cluster included behaviors such as vocalizing to a social stimulus, making an anticipatory adjustment to being lifted, and enjoying frolic play. Male infants who had experienced greater amounts of interaction with their fathers appeared more responsive to social instigations in the testing situation. The Bayley examiner was male, and there is the possibility that some degree of generalization of the infant’s responsiveness to the father occurred to the examiner. Another possible interpretation is that the infant’s relationship with his father makes it easier for him to expand his ties beyond the mother and establish trusting
** p < .01.
* p < .05.
General status Bayley Mental Dev. Index Bayley Psychomotor Dev. Index Social responsiveness Language Vocalization to bell Language quality Motor development Gross Fine Cognitive-motivational Goal directedness Reaching & grasping Secondary circular reactions Problem solving Object permanence Exploratory behavior Look at bell Manipulate bell Preference for novel stimuli Look at novel stimuli Manipulate novel stimuli
Infant functioning 16 11 1.6 46.2 1.4 1.9 2.7 1.4 1.5 0.0 2.5 1.6 74 86 90 132
36.2 3.6 7.8 9.7 3.8 8.0 2.0 4.3 2.7 256 2 83
25 1 44 1
SD
10)
121 114 5.9
Mean
(N =
Father present
2 00 330
223 288
3.1 7.3 1.7 3.8 2.1
7.1 8.5
19.4 3.0
109 108 4.7
85 166
101 136
1.5 2.8 .6 2.9 1.2
3.5 3.5
25.2 1.4
16.7 17.7 1.6
Father absent ( N = 18) Mean SD
< .05
-
.05
-
INFANT DEVELOPMENT I N FATHER-ABSENT FAMILIES*' National Institute of Child Health and Human DcvclopmGnt
FRANK A. PEDERSEN,JUDITH L. RUBENSTEIN,'AND LEONJ. YARROW SUMMARY In a sample of 55 black infants (age 5-6 months) living in the inner city in lower socioeconomic circumstances, 2 7 infants were being reared by their mothers in single-parent families. Male infants who had experienced minimal interaction with their fathers were significantly lower on the Bayley Mental Developmental Index and in measures of social responsiveness, secondary circular reactions, and preferences for novel stimuli. Female infants in this sample appeared unaffected by the father's presence or absence. After weighing alternative interpretations of the findings, we conclude that the father is a significant component in the early environment and that both observational studies and conceptual development of the role of the father in infancy are needed.
INTRODUCTION Bronfenbrenner (l), citing information from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, has recently called attention to the fact that one American child in six is a member of a single-parent family. In the important early years (under three) 13% of all Americans are reared by a single parent, usually the mother. Undoubtedly the experiences of children in one-parent families differ from those in families with a father as well as a mother. Several studies have indicated that father absence significantly influences children's cognitive and personality development. For example, Deutsch and Brown (4) reported significantly lower ZQ scores for first-grade black children reared in father-absent circumstances compared with their father-present peers. A.
* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on March 1 7 , 1978. Copyright, 1979, by The Journal Press. The authorj wish to thank Joseph Jankowski and Richard Cain, Jr. for their contributions to the data collection and analyses. * The present affiliation of the second author is Tufts New England Medical Center Hospital.
51
52
JOURNAL OF GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
While single-parent families headed by the mother usually have lower economic resources than two-parent families, Deutsch and Brown presented evidence for father absence having an affect on ZQ that was greater than that attributable to socioeconomic factors alone. Some studies ( 2 , 3 ) have also suggested that father absence occurring early in life (before three years) is of greater consequence than father absence occurring later, although outcome measures have been obtained characteristically at primary school age or later. In this investigation we studied the cognitive, social and motivational development of infants (age 5-6 months) in father-absent families, comparing them with infants reared in father-present environments. There has been very little conceptual thinking about the role of the father in the preidentification period. This lack of conceptualization may derive from our matricentric view of child rearing, the assumption that the father has no great impact on the developing infant, but there has heretofore been no empirical test of this assumption. Evidence of any influence of the father upon development is therefore relevant to our basic theoretical assumptions regarding the early environment.
B.
METHOD
1. Context of This Study
The analyses reported in this investigation derive from a larger study of environmental influences on development reported in detail elsewhere (8). The larger investigation included home observations of the infant’s primary caregiver, typically the infant’s mother, but also including other people such as grandmothers, aunts, or unrelated baby-sitters. Where it is appropriate, data from the larger investigation will be presented even though it is beyond the scope of this report to provide complete details of the methodology. 2.
Sample
The sample consisted of 55 black full term infants (28 males and 2 7 females) recruited through two public well-baby clinics in the Washington, D.C., area. All infants were healthy based upon pediatric and neurological screening examinations. Twenty-five infants were firstborn and 3 0 were later born. The mean age of the mothers was 23.1 years (range: 16 to 41) and their mean educational attainment was 10.8 years of school completed (range: 7 to 13 years). All families were living in the inner city in economic circumstances that ranged from poverty to lower-middle-class levels. Many
FRANK A. PEDERSEN, JUDITH RUBENSTEIN, AND LEON J. YARROW
53
households included extended family such as grandparents and aunts. There was a mean of 2.9 adults residing in each household even though approximately half of the families did not include the father. 3 . Detemzination of Father-Absent Families
The sample was classified dichotomously into father-absent or fatherpresent families based on the mother’s response to questions concerning household members. These questions were asked on several occasions by a research pediatrician and a home observer when the infant was between three and five months of age, the period when these staff members had contact with the family. The focus of the questions was on the full range of people who came in contact with the infant and, if the father was not mentioned spontaneously, direct inquiry was made. The classification was not based on marital status; father-absent families included instances where the father was out of town for a protracted period because of military service or other employment as well as separations due to family discord and conflict. By virtue of the ongoing relationship with the research staff, there is reasonable certainty that there was accurate reporting. Eighteen of the 2 8 male infants and nine of the 2 7 females were classified father-absent. The association between sex of infant and single-parent status is statistically significant (x2= 4.08, p < .05); male infants in this sample were more likely to be from father-absent families. This finding is in itself curious. Whether it is psychologically important or is merely a sampling factor, there is an important methodological implication. The effects of father absence must be analyzed separately by sex of infant so that possible sex differences in infant behavior are not confounded with differences associated with father absence. 4.
Measure of Father Contact
It is apparent that a simple measure of household membership does not fully describe the father’s relationship with his child. In this sample, there were a few instances where the father, although living elsewhere, was described as having some degree of interaction with the baby associated with his relationship with the mother. In addition, there were instances of fathers living in the home who had very little contact with their infants. In order to deal with this information, a second measure was developed which was a more refined scale describing the father’s amount of interaction with the infant. This five point rating, based upon the mother’s report, ranges from no contact with the infant through daily interaction involving both play and
54
JOURNAL OF GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
caregiving activities. Interrater agreement, expressed as a correlation between independent judgments from the interviewer’s summary, was .96. There is a rank order correlation of .76 between this rating, amount of interaction with the infant, and the dichotomous classification of father absence or presence, indicating that there is slightly different information in the two variables. 5 . Infant Functioning There were 16 measures of infant functioning obtained at 5 to 6 months of age in two different sessions with different male examiners. In the first session, the Bayley Tests of Infant Development were administered. This yielded the Mental and Psychomotor Developmental Indexes and eight clusters of items developed from the Bayley to measure social, motor, and cognitive-motivational development in a more differentiated manner. After the Bayley, a special set of four test items was given to measure rudimentary problem-solving behavior. In the second session, a structured situational test was administered to obtain two measures of exploratory behavior and two measures of preference for novel stimuli. The measures of exploratory behavior were the amounts of time the infant spent in visual attention to and manipulation of a standard toy, a bell, presented for a 10-minute period. After this familiarization period, the bell was then paired for one-minute intervals with 10 different toys, ones with which the infant had no previous experience. Preferences for novel stimuli were measured by recording the amounts of time spent in visual and manipulative exploration of the novel toys compared to the familiar bell. One additional measure was also obtained from this procedure: the infant’s amount of vocalization during exploration was timed in the 10-minute period when the infant was free to inspect and manipulate the bell. A more extended discussion of these procedures and measures is available elsewhere ( 8 ) , but variables which were significantly related to the father will be discussed in greater detail in the context of the results. 6.
Data Analysis
The basic research question is whether there is evidence that infants reared in father-absent environments show developmental deficits. Allied to this issue is the question of whether the father’s amount of interaction with the infant, a more refined measure than the dichotomous classification, is related to early cognitive, social and motivational development. To answer the first question, the scores of the 16 measures of early development were
FRANK A. PEDERSEN, JUDITH RUBENSTEIN, AND LEON J. YARROW
55
compared for the father-absent and father-present groups separately for male and female infants. Because of skewed distributions on some of the measures, the Mann-Whitney U test, an appropriate nonparametric statistic, was used. For the second question, rank-order correlations were computed between the rating scale of paternal behavior and the infant measures.
c.
RESULTS AND
DISCUSSION
For female infants, there were no significant relationships between the father variables and any of the measures of infant functioning. Neither father absence nor amount of father interaction showed significant associations with the development of infant girls. The findings were quite different for the male infants. Fifteen out of the 16 measures of infant development were numerically lower in the father-absent group, and three of these differences were statistically significant (see Table 1). The rating, amount of father interaction with infant, yielded five significant correlations, four of which were significant at the one percent level. This measure has slightly stronger relationships with functioning (in male infants) than the more global classification of father absence versus father presence. The reason may be that this rating gives some indication of the intensity of the father’s relationship with the infant, a much more meaningful measure than simply whether he is living in the same house. The data indicate that the means on the Bayley Mental Developmental Index were higher for the father-present males and there is a significant correlation between amount of father interaction and the Bayley Mental Developmental Index. The Mental Developmental Index is best interpreted as a rather heterogeneous measure of early cognitive skills and motivational characteristics; more differentiated statements about the selective influence of the father’s relationship on male infants is possible from the clusters derived from the Bayley. Father-present male infants were significantly higher on a cluster of eight Bayley items measuring social responsiveness. This cluster included behaviors such as vocalizing to a social stimulus, making an anticipatory adjustment to being lifted, and enjoying frolic play. Male infants who had experienced greater amounts of interaction with their fathers appeared more responsive to social instigations in the testing situation. The Bayley examiner was male, and there is the possibility that some degree of generalization of the infant’s responsiveness to the father occurred to the examiner. Another possible interpretation is that the infant’s relationship with his father makes it easier for him to expand his ties beyond the mother and establish trusting
** p < .01.
* p < .05.
General status Bayley Mental Dev. Index Bayley Psychomotor Dev. Index Social responsiveness Language Vocalization to bell Language quality Motor development Gross Fine Cognitive-motivational Goal directedness Reaching & grasping Secondary circular reactions Problem solving Object permanence Exploratory behavior Look at bell Manipulate bell Preference for novel stimuli Look at novel stimuli Manipulate novel stimuli
Infant functioning 16 11 1.6 46.2 1.4 1.9 2.7 1.4 1.5 0.0 2.5 1.6 74 86 90 132
36.2 3.6 7.8 9.7 3.8 8.0 2.0 4.3 2.7 256 2 83
25 1 44 1
SD
10)
121 114 5.9
Mean
(N =
Father present
2 00 330
223 288
3.1 7.3 1.7 3.8 2.1
7.1 8.5
19.4 3.0
109 108 4.7
85 166
101 136
1.5 2.8 .6 2.9 1.2
3.5 3.5
25.2 1.4
16.7 17.7 1.6
Father absent ( N = 18) Mean SD
< .05
-
.05
-
