Father Involvement

SUMMARY This paper assumes a developmental focus to provide a psychological perspective of father involvement. A key element of this objective is to recognize how difficult it is to define the complexities of father involvement. Components of father involvement include such relationship components as direct interaction, availability, and the managerial function, all of which are conceptually distinct. Other issues worthy of careful consideration are the context of father involvement, processes used to index involvement, and dimensions of involvement. In addition to examining father involvement from a developmental perspective, future research needs to study father involvement within a greater variety of ethnic-minority groups so that both cross-group and within-group variability can be appreciated. Finally, a more complete understanding of father involvement will require the use of multiple research methods involving both experimental and nonexperimental approaches.