Husbands at home: Determinants of paternal involvement in single-earner and dual-earner families

The relation of fathers' involvement with their preschool-aged children to fathers' reported marital adjustment, sex-role attitudes, perceived social support, and perceived parenting competence, and mothers' employment status and sex-role attitude was examined in a study of 94 fathers and mothers of 3 to 5 year old children. Three levels of paternal involvement were examined. In forty-four of the families, mothers were employed for 20 or more hours per week (dual-earners) and in 50 families, mothers were minimally employed or unemployed outside of the home (single-earners). A second set of analyses examined the potential moderation of maternal employment status on the relation of paternal involvement and predictor variables. Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out separately for the 3 levels of paternal involvement, namely, interaction, accessibility, and responsibility. Results indicated that marital characteristics and mothers' number of work hours per week and mothers' sex-role attitudes contributed significant variance to all 3 levels of paternal involvement. Fathers' perceived social support contributed significant unique variance to paternal interaction, above and beyond that accounted for by marital and mother characteristics. The set of father characteristics contributed significant variance only to paternal responsibility, above and beyond that accounted for by marital, mother, and social support variables. Gender of the target preschool-aged child did not contribute any additional variance to any of the 3 levels of paternal involvement. Moderation analyses results indicated that maternal employment status moderated the relation between fathers' perceived parenting competence and paternal responsibility and fathers' sex-role attitudes and paternal responsibility. Maternal employment status also moderated the relation between fathers' perceived social support and paternal accessibility. These findings are consistent with a multidimensional view of fathering and father involvement.