Associations between paternal involvement and adolescent sleep, mental health, and brain development

Objective Paternal involvement contributes to children’s development, yet less is known about its role during the pre-adolescent and adolescent years. We examined longitudinal associations between paternal involvement and adolescent development, focusing on sleep health, given its relevance to mental health. Method We leveraged data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study with diverse ethnicity to examine longitudinal associations between paternal involvement and youth sleep health (sleep duration, midpoint and latency), brain development (hippocampal and cerebellar volumes), and mental health outcomes in pre-adolescence and adolescence while controlling for maternal involvement and testing the potentially moderating role of youth sex. Results Exploratory analyses examining pre-adolescent outcomes showed paternal involvement was associated with longer sleep duration for female participants. Greater paternal involvement also showed less internalizing and externalizing problems for all pre-adolescents. Longer sleep duration was associated with more internalizing problems for male participants but less externalizing problems for female participants. We did not document associations to outcomes in adolescence. Conclusions Paternal involvement, independently of maternal involvement, may play a role in pre-adolescents’ sleep health. As pre-adolescents’ sleep health was associated with socioemotional outcomes, our findings suggest future studies should directly test mechanistic pathways. However, in adolescence, we did not document longitudinal associations between paternal involvement and our outcomes, suggesting that other factors may play a bigger role in sleep and socioemotional outcomes. Our results indicate fathers’ critical role in pre-adolescent health and well-being. Future studies should examine interactions between paternal involvement and other factors predictive of sleep and socioemotional well-being in adolescence.