Father involvement in different family systems across cultural communities: Links to childhood development

This chapter discusses paternal involvement in diverse living arrangements in high-, middle-, and low- income countries and their implications for childhood development. Men's ideas about fathering roles and responsibilities are changing noticeably in the high- income countries but at a far slower pace in the rest of the world. This is a major hindrance to engaged fathering. Despite the prevalence of masculine norms in most regions of the world, men display levels of warmth toward children that are comparable to that of mothers, and in a few instances fathers exceed mothers in the display of affection to children. An area in which fathers seem to lag behind mothers is in their engagement in cognitively rich language and numeracy activities with children. This is particularly so in the low- and middle- income countries. Ultimately, the associations between father engagement and childhood outcomes are more consistent for families in high- income than low- income countries, and the associations are sometimes tempered by family union status, the quality of partner relationship, and material resources.