Invisible Fathers Influence

Chip off the old block: Fathers’ influence on sons’ attitudes toward marriage

Charlie H Williams III
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Chip Off the Old Block: Fathers’ Influence on Sons’ Attitudes toward Marriage Historically, when discussing the relationships between parents and their children the research has emphasized relationships between mothers and their children, specifically focusing on issues such as teen pregnancy and single motherhood. There has been little to no research on parent-child relationships emphasizing single fathers and their children or single fatherhood in the African American community. The little research that has been attempted always focused on the “invisible” father
More research needs to be conducted on single fathers and their influences on their adolescent children. Single fathers are a demographic that has a negative connotation attached to it because of stereotypes that are perpetuated throughout the media about the African American and Hispanic American communities. The data suggest that the invisible father has become an epidemic because most studies are designed with only the mother (single, teen, step, or divorced) in mind. However, there are some single fathers out there who actually are involved in their children’s lives. Do single fathers, African American in particular, who spend more time with their adolescent sons, have sons who have more positive attitudes toward marriage and family? New research on single father and fatherhood in general would shed light on why some single fathers take on the responsibility of fatherhood willingly and why others shy away from it or downright reject it. This could ultimately reveal if the behaviors or attitudes exhibited by these fathers would influence their adolescent sons, coloring their ideas about marriage and family. I predict that the more time single African American fathers spend with their adolescent sons, the more positive attitudes they will have toward marriage and
separated, divorced, widowed, custodial father never married, etc…). There will be two semi-private areas set up in a local community center. Each area will have multiple computers where the participants will gather and answer the survey questions. The Father Involvement scale will be used to measure African American single fathers’ involvement (Finley and Schwartz, 2004). This scale lists 20 domains of father involvement. For each domain listed, the participants are asked to rate fathers’ involvement on a scale of 1(not at all involved) to 5 (very involved). The total score will be calculated by adding up the domain ratings. The possible scores can range from 20 to 100. Participants will be instructed to place their father’s involvement rating into the right hand blank of the domain listed, (e.g., “Social Development_______”). No score will be reversed scored for this scale. Hill’s Favorableness of Attitude toward Marriage Scale (Hill, 1951) will be used to measure adolescent sons’ attitude toward marriage and family. This is a Likert-type style of measurement which consists of 9 questions. The Participants will be asked to rate their attitude toward marriage on a scale from 1 (not difficult at all) to 5 (very difficult). A sample item will read “In your opinion, would