Change in Paternal Involvement from 1977 to 1997: A Cohort Analysis

Contemporary social expectations of fathering promote an image of fathers more heavily involved in child rearing than their counterparts from past decades. However, some have questioned whether or not the actual “conduct” of fatherhood has changed over time. Fathers from two nationally representative data sets and from two distinct time periods—1977 and 1997—were selected to test whether there has been a change in the amount of time that fathers spend with their children. The results of a cohort analysis indicated that fathers from each of the age cohorts in 1997 reported spending more time with children on both workdays and non-workdays than comparable fathers in 1977. In addition, younger fathers from both time periods generally reported spending more time with their children than did older fathers. Common predictors of paternal involvement differed somewhat in each time period.