This paper reports the results of meta-analysis of the literature addressing the effects of father-absence on both male and female sex-role development. Considering both published and unpublished papers, the analysis involved 33 studies of males and 16 studies of females which become available between 1958 and 1982 and which studied father-absence…

Women have higher rates of poverty than men in almost all societies. This paper compares the difference between male and female poverty in modern nations, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) to compare men's and women's poverty rates in eight Western industrialized countries in the 1990s. The LIS contains information on household…

This ethnographic study focuses on two homeless mothers and their efforts to support their families. The study reveals how the mothers came to be homeless and how this experience has affected them. The work examines the experiences of the mothers with and perceptions of their children's education as well as the roles the mothers play in the…

Gang membership and violence are pervasive across the United States. Today children, adolescents and young adults of all social classes and environments are susceptible to gang involvement. Gang members are getting younger and gang leaders are getting older. The composition and structure of the family is examined for the common element between…

As family structures have shifted to include a high proportion of single parent households, more attention has been directed toward the characteristics of both the maternal and paternal roles. A study was conducted to identify the nurturing qualities of parenthood in a sample of 51 presently unmarried, noncustodial fathers, and to determine the…

This study examined characteristics of never married fathers adjudicated in the Third Judicial Circuit of Michigan as legal and biological fathers. Participating were 39 fathers with Parenting Time Orders (PTO) and 25 with Reserved Parenting Time Orders (RPTO) (the father lacks legal parental access to his child). Sixty percent of the fathers were…

Since imaginative play has been found to be related to multiple social and cognitive skills, it is important to explore possible family variables that are significantly related to such behavior. The purpose of the study was to examine the level of imaginative and social play of children in relation to three family issues: (a) family structure…

Although self-reports from individual family members regarding their relationship patterns have been used to assess dysfunctional family processes, researchers often rely upon one family member as the source of such information. A study was undertaken to examine the relationship between mothers', fathers', adolescents', and observers' ratings of…

This study is the first to examine racial and ethnic diversity in nonresident father involvement for multiple domains of father involvement. Data come from a sample of 5,377 adolescents with nonresident fathers in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Add Health. In addition to contact, we explore more intensive types of involvement…

While a number of factors influencing the adjustment of family members following divorce have been studied, the relationship of the child's gender to the custodial mother's adjustment has not received much systematic attention. This study examined the relationship between gender of the eldest child and self-reported psychopathology of the…

Father absence and measures of sex role attitudes in children have been examined in previous research. To investigate whether father presence is more likely to be positively related to instrumentality in both boys and girls, children and their parents completed questionnaires. Boys scored higher than girls on the instrumentality measures. Children…

This paper discusses the implications of changes in the family environment on child development. Changes identified concern increases in the number and percentage of children who live in poverty, maternal employment in two-parent families, single-parent families, and the number of children in nonparental child care. Characteristics of poverty for…

This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of family functioning in families who have become homeless and poor families who have never been homeless. Relying on the McMaster Model of Family Functioning, it focused on family functioning in terms of transactional patterns or the family's mode of interaction as a unit. Subjects consisted…

On the basis of published evidence of the negative effects of marital dissolution on homemaking and the implicit negative effects of father absence on mealtime, it was hypothesized that intact families and families with separated parents would differ in aspects of family life associated with food. Of particular interest were the subhypotheses that…

The effects of both early and late father-absence upon school achievement, cognitive development, and emotional development of 27 Australian males between 9 and 12 years of age were examined. Three groups of boys were evaluated in order to ascertain the effects of paternal deprivation. These groups included children experiencing (1) early…