Handbook of Fathers and Child Development: Prenatal to Preschool

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of the impact of fathers on child development from prenatal years to age five. It examines the effects of the father-child relationship on the child’s neurobiological development; hormonal, emotional and behavioral regulatory systems; and on the systemic embodiment of experiences into the child’s mental models of self, others, and self-other relationships. The volume reflects two perspectives guiding research with fathers: Identifying positive and negative factors that influence early childhood development, specifying child outcomes, and emphasizing cultural diversity in father involvement; and examining multifaceted, specific approaches to guide father research.

Key topics addressed include:

• Direct assessment of father parenting (rather than through maternal reports).
  
• The effects of father presence (in contrast to father absence).
  
• The full diversity of father involvement.
  
• Father’s impact on gender role differentiation.
  
• Father’s role in triadic interactions of family dynamics.
  
• Father involvement in psychotherapeutic family interventions.

This handbook draws from converging perspectives about the role of fathers in very early child development, summarizes what is known, and, within each chapter, draws attention to the critical questions that need to be answered in coming decades.

The Handbook of Fathers and Child Development is a must-have resource for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians, therapists, and other professionals in infancy and early child development, social work, public health, developmental and clinical child psychology, pediatrics, family studies, neuroscience, juvenile justice, child and adolescent psychiatry, school and educational psychology, anthropology, sociology, and all interrelated disciplines.

Hiram E Fitzgerald, Ph.D., is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Associate Provost Emeritus for University Outreach and Engagement at Michigan State University. Dr. Fitzgerald was  associated with the Michigan Longitudinal Study of Family Risk for Alcoholism over the Life Course for 30 years, the Early Head Start National Research Consortium, the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center at the University of Colorado, Denver, the MSU Wiba Anung EHS/HS research team, is a member of the Native Children’s Research Exchange and is a member of various interdisciplinary research teams focusing on evaluation of community-based early preventive-intervention programs in Michigan. He also serves on the National Advisory Boards of the Buffet Childhood Research Center (University of Nebraska),  the Oklahoma State University Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity, and the Rocky Mountain Prevention Center (University of Colorado, Denver). Dr. Fitzgerald’s major areas of research include the study of infant and family development in community contexts, the impact of fathers on early child development, implementation of systemic community models of organizational process and change, the etiology of alcoholism, and broad issues related to the scholarship of engagement. He received a doctorate in developmental psychology (1967) from the University of Denver as well as numerous awards, including the ZERO TO THREE Dolley Madison Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to the Development and Well Being of Very Young Children, the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health Selma Fraiberg Award, and the designation of Honorary President from the World Association for Infant Mental Health. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 7, 34, 37, 43, and 50) and the Association of Psychological Science. He is an elected member of the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship, and the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame.

Kai von Klitzing, M.D., Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Leipzig, Germany, is a psychoanalyst for adults, adolescents, and children (Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and German Psychoanalytical Association/IPA), Training Analyst, Editor of the Journal Kinderanalyse/Child Analysis, Associate Editor of the Infant Mental Health Journal, and President of the World Association for Infant Mental Health. His scientific interests include developmental psychopathology, early triadic relationships (mother-father-infant), children’s narratives, psychotherapy (individual and family), childhood maltreatment, and neurobiology. He has published books on attachment disorder, children of immigrant families, and child psychotherapy.

Natasha J. Cabrera, Ph.D., is Professor of Human Development at the University of Maryland and was a Society for Research in Child Development Executive Branch Fellow at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Dr. Cabrera’s research focuses on father involvement and children’s social and cognitive development; adaptive and maladaptive factors related to parenting; ethnic and cultural variations in fathering and mothering behaviors; family processes in a social and cultural context and children’s development; and the mechanisms that link early experiences to children’s school readiness. Dr. Cabrera has published in peer-reviewed journals on policy, methodology, theory, and the implications of fathering and mothering behaviors on child development in low-income minority families. She is the co-editor of the Handbook of Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Second Edition (Taylor & Francis, 2013) and Latina/o Child Psychology and Mental Health: Vol 1: Early to Middle Childhood: Development and Context and Vol 2: Adolescent Development (Praeger, 2011). Dr. Cabrera is an Associate Editor of Child Development and the recipient ofthe National Council and Family Relations award for Best Research Article regarding men in families in 2009. In 2015, the National Academy of Sciences appointed her to its committee supporting the parents of young children. She was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar in 2016. She is co-PI at the National Center for Research on Hispanic Families and Children co-directing the fatherhood and healthy marriage focus area. In 2017, she was a DAAD visiting scholar at the University of Ruhr, Bochum, Germany.

Júlia Scarano de Mendonça, Ph.D., is Professor in the Graduate Program in Educational Psychology at Centro Universitário FIEO, Osasco, São Paulo, Brazil. Dr. de Mendonça has an interdisciplinary training on Human Communication Disorders (B.A.), Linguistics (M.A.) and Psychology (Ph.D. and postdoctorate), which has led her to work as a university professor in several courses (psychology, education, biology, human communication disorders, and modern languages) and to undertake interdisciplinary research on family nonverbal communication, both in normal and clinical populations. Dr. de Mendonça’s research focuses on family functioning and fathers’ role in Brazilian low-income families in the context of postpartum depression; family influences on the child’s emotion regulation skills and empathy; and the development of mental health prevention programs in families at risk for postpartum depression as well as in the school setting in low-income Brazilian contexts. Dr. de Mendonça received a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the Université du Québec à Montréal, in Canada, where she lived for seven years and did her postdoctorate in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, from 2011 to 2015. In 2014, Dr. de Mendonça was a FAPESP research fellow at the Wesfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, in Germany. Dr. de Mendonça is a member of the research group Evolutionay Psychology from the National Association of Postgraduate Research in Brazil (ANPEPP) and of the NGO Cuca Legal, linked to the Department of Psychiatry at the Federal University of São Paulo, in Brazil. In 2014, Dr. de Mendonça was invited to add the micro-analytic coding scheme “Taxonomy of Interactional Synchrony” she developed during her Ph.D. to the database PsychTests from the American Psychological Association.

Thomas Skjøthaug, Ph.D., is a specialist in clinical psychology, works with families – parents and their children – in an outpatient clinic at the Diakonhjemmet hospital. His lectures focus on research about fathers’ mental health during pregnancy and during the child’s early years in life. He is connected to the Network for Infant Mental Health in Norway and the Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Eastern and Southern Norway. Specifically, Dr. Skjøthaug’s research involves investigation of fathers’ adverse childhood experiences and fathers’ mental health during pregnancy, pathways from pregnancy to experienced stress postpartum and fathers’ prenatal attachment patterns with interactional quality postpartum. He is also interested in how political arrangements affect fathers’ involvement (i.e., parental and paternal leave).