New Fathers' Experiences with Their Own Fathers and Attitudes Toward Fathering

Using the baseline father sample of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey (n=3,525), I consider how father type and presence and biological father involvement is associated with new father's attitudes toward fathering, testing the modeling and compensatory hypotheses. Results generally support the modeling hypothesis. Relative to new fathers who had a very involved coresidential father, men whose father was less involved are less likely to support the notion that fathers serve as authority figures. Men who had neither a coresidential father nor a father figure and whose biological father was not very involved are less agreeable to the idea that fathers are important sources of financial support or direct care. Weak support for the compensatory hypothesis is found for more global attitudes toward fatherhood and in results suggesting men with a father-figure have more favorable father attitudes than men who did not have a father-figure.