| This dissertation developed and empirically tested a multidimensional model of biological resident fathers' distal and proximal contributions during infancy to children's later language development using the Family Life Project dataset. The Family Life Project dataset included a large sample of 521 two-parent middle-income and low-income African-American and non-African-American families. The results of this study suggest fathers made contributions to children's communication and language development via characteristics of family SES, father work experience, the mother-father relationship, and father-child proximal processes. Specifically, higher family SES, positive father reasoning skills in the mother-father relationship, and highly engaging and stimulating father-child interactions when children are 6 months were significantly associated with more advance child communication at 15 months and expressive language development at 24 months. Father job insecurity when children were 6 months was negatively associated with child language development at 24 months. |
