Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 363–369

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Clinical Psychology Review

Fathers' behaviors and children's psychopathology

Eirini Flouri ⁎
Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, University of London, 25 Woburn Square, London WC1H OAA, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The psychological literature on how fathers' behaviors may be related to children's psychopathology has
Received 5 November 2009 grown substantially in the last three decades. This growth is the result of research asking the following three
Received in revised form 2 January 2010 overarching questions: (1) what is the association between family structure, and particularly biological
Accepted 21 January 2010
fathers' non-residence, and children's psychopathology, (2) what is the association between fathers'
parenting and children's psychopathology, and (3) what is the association between fathers' psychopathology
Keywords:
and children's psychopathology. The three broad theoretical perspectives relevant to this literature are the
Child psychopathology
Fathering
standard family environment model, the passive genetic model, and the child effects model. The evidence
Fathers from studies comparing the first two models seems to suggest that the origin of the association between
parental divorce and children's emotional and behavioral problems is largely shared environmental in origin,
as is the association between resident fathers' parenting and children's emotional and behavioral problems,
according to studies comparing the standard family environment model with the child effects model.
However, research needs to compare appropriately all theoretical perspectives. The paper discusses this, and
also points to the importance of considering theory-driven specificity in modeling effects.
© 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
2. Children's psychopathology and fathers' non-residence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
2.1. The theoretical models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
3. Child psychopathology and father's parenting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
4. The standard family environment model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
5. The child effects and the passive genetic models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
6. Child psychopathology and father's psychopathology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

1. Introduction
The last two decades have witnessed a growing concern and
interest in the role that fathers play in the lives of their children
(Calzada, Eyberg, Rich & Quersido, 2004; Phares, Lopez, Fields,
Kamboukos & Duhig, 2005; Stolz, Barber & Olsen, 2005), and recently
a lot of good studies have been carried out to model links between
fathers' and children's behaviors. This interest in fathers can, in part,
be attributed to the growing interest in the rapid pace of family
⁎ Tel.: +44 2076126289; fax: +44 2076126304.
E-mail address: e.flouri@ioe.ac.uk.
change in the last three decades. The consequences, especially for
children, of these changes have been the subject of a heated debate. In
developmental psychopathology this debate usually involves evi-
dence for the following three associations: the association between
family structure, and particularly biological fathers' non-residence,
and children's psychopathology, the association between fathers'
parenting and children's psychopathology, and the association
between fathers' and children's psychopathology. The three broad
theoretical perspectives that drive the research on fathers' absence
and child psychopathology, but also on paternal parenting and child
psychopathology, are the standard family environment model, the
passive genetic model, and the child effects model (Amato & Cheadle,
2008). This paper discusses the evidence for these associations, and

0272-7358/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.004
364 E. Flouri / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 363–369
concludes that to move the field forward future studies need to
consider theory-driven specificity in modeling effects, and to compare
alternative theoretical perspectives.
2. Children's psychopathology and fathers' non-residence
Voluminous evidence has been collected since the 1970s to either
support or refute (Silverstein & Auerbach, 1999) Moynihan's (1965)
‘pathology of the matriarchy’ hypothesis that the absence of a father is
destructive to children, particularly boys, because it means that
children will lack the economic resources, role models, discipline,
structure, and guidance that a father provides. As a result, we now
know a lot about links between children's internalizing and
externalizing behavior problems in single mother families (Amato &
Gilbreth, 1999), and we are increasingly building knowledge about
the adjustment of children in single father families. For example,
Luoma et al. (1999) who compared the prevalence of emotional and
behavioral problems in children living in stepfather families with that
in children living in single father families showed that living with a
single father was associated with having more externalizing, school-
related problems, while living with a stepfather was associated with
having more internalizing, home-related problems in their sample of
8–9 year-olds in Finland. More recently, Bjarnason and colleagues
who explored the association between family structure and alcohol
use (Bjarnason, Andersson, Choquet, Elekes, Morgan and Rapinett,
2003) and smoking (Bjarnason, Davidaviciene, Miller, Nociar, Pavlakis
and Stergar, 2003) in adolescents from Cyprus, France, Hungary,
Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia,
Sweden, and the UK showed that, although adolescents living with
both biological parents engaged less frequently in heavy alcohol use
and smoked less than those living in any other arrangements,
adolescents living with a single mother both drank and smoked less
than those living with a single father or with neither biological parent.
Recent American research reveals a similar picture: although
adolescents in single-parent families are more delinquent than their
counterparts residing with two biological parents, adolescents from
single father families are significantly more delinquent than those
living in single mother families (Demuth & Brown, 2004), and
although adolescents in single-parent or stepparent families are at
heightened risk of drug use, adolescents living in single father families
are at risk of both higher levels of use and increasing use over time
(Hoffmann, 2002). Patten et al. (1997), also in the United States, had
earlier shown that although family structure was not related to
depressive symptoms in their adolescents' sample, significantly
higher rates of depressive symptoms were found among adolescents
who resided with parent(s) not perceived as supportive than those
who lived with supportive parent(s), with girls being particularly
vulnerable if they lived in a non-supportive, single father household.
This was only some of the recent evidence suggesting that, in
general, research findings cannot be neatly construed to fit with a
‘pathology of matriarchy’ view. In fact, although the general
conclusion from studies carried out since the 1970s (Amato, 2000;
McMunn, Nazroo, Marmot, Boreham & Goodman, 2001) is that
children experiencing family disruption carry a heightened risk of
short- and long-term adverse psychological outcomes (Cronk, Slutske,
Madden, Bucholz & Heath, 2004), this risk is not consistent (Chase-
Lansdale, Cherlin & Kiernan, 1995) and it is modified by various
factors. For example, it is modified by the number and timing of
parents' partnership transitions (Ge, Natsuaki & Conger, 2006).
Lansford et al. (2006), for instance, following a sample of children
from kindergarten through 10th grade, showed that parental divorce
during elementary school was more negatively related to trajectories
of children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems than
was later divorce/separation, whereas later divorce/separation was
more negatively related to children's school grades. It is also modified
by the pathway into single parenthood (e.g., via parental separation or
via parental death) and by the structure of the family following
disruption (Hofferth, 2006), with children's psychological adjustment
being, on average, worse in stepfamilies than in single mother families
(Amato & Keith, 1991). The general consensus is that the deterioration
of economic conditions that usually results from family disruption
(McLanahan, 1999) is the major explanation for children's lower
ability and achievement, although not necessarily for children's
internalizing and externalizing behavior problems (Duncan, Brooks-
Gunn, Yeung & Smith, 1998), following parental divorce or separation.
However, the finding that parental death typically has a smaller (less
negative) effect on children than the effect of parental divorce (Biblarz
& Gottainer, 2000) is also consistent with the argument that at least
some of the divorce effect is due to selection (Harris, 1998).
By using genetically sensitive study designs, as the relation
between parental family disruption and offspring problematic behav-
ior may be due to shared genetic or environmental factors, recent
research has started to address this issue of selection effects
systematically and to shed new light in the parental divorce–child
adjustment link. For example, D'Onofrio et al. (2006) showed that, in
their sample of children of twins discordant for divorce, divorce was
related to educational problems, depressed mood and suicidal
ideation, and to earlier initiation of sexual intercourse and of
emotional problems. However, the increased risk of earlier initiation
of drug use among children who had experienced divorce was
explained by selection factors, including genetic confounds. Another
recent genetically sensitive study addressing selection effects (Mendle
et al., 2006) explained the finding that girls who grow up in stepfather
households reach menarche earlier than peers – which had been
routinely hypothesized to be an evolutionary adaptive strategy for
families under stress – with the alternative hypothesis that nonran-
dom selection into stepfathering due to shared environmental and/or
genetic predispositions creates a spurious relation between step-
fathering and early menarche. Mendle et al. (2006) used a children of
twins design to compare age of menarche of girls raised in the presence
of stepfathers with age of menarche of their cousins (the daughters of
the mother's discordant cotwin) raised without stepfathers. As
discordant twin comparisons eliminate the family level confounds
that may influence timing of menarche – since the comparison is made
within a single family – the authors were able to show that cousins
discordant for stepfathering did not differ in age of menarche. In
addition, controlling for mother's age of menarche eliminated
differences in menarcheal age associated with stepfathering in
unrelated girls. This was an important study as, until recently, the
issue of whether the higher levels of father-reported child's problems
in stepfather families compared to the levels of father-reported child's
problems in resident biological father families simply reflected
stepfathers' low tolerance or biological fathers' complacency (Daly &
Wilson, 1998), rather than evidence for the higher risk of adverse
outcomes, especially externalizing symptoms, among children in
restructured families (Foley et al., 2004; Dunn, 2002), or evidence
for selection effects was largely unresolved. It was not clear, in other
words, if the elevated stepfather-reported child psychopathology
scores usually observed in studies reflected stepfathers' low tolerance
levels, or were due to the pre-existing predispositions of children in
families that separate and restructure, to the effects of these multiple
family changes or the high exposure of children in restructured
families to parental risk factors, or simply to the pre-existing
characteristics of fathers who become stepfathers.
2.1. The theoretical models
Amato and Cheadle (2008) recently summarized evidence for the
three broad theoretical perspectives relevant to the literature linking
father absence with child psychopathology. The most popular
perspective, which they referred to as the standard family environ-
ment model, assumes that many single-parent families formed
 E. Flouri / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 363–369
through parental separation are less than optimal settings for
children's socialization and development. Consequently, exposure to
these environments increases the risk of a variety of problems for the
children (Burt, Barnes, McGue & Iacono, 2008). The second perspec-
tive, or the passive genetic model (Plomin, DeFries & Loehlin, 1977),
assumes that parents' and children's behaviors are linked because of
the transmission of genes from parents to children. Parents with
problematic personality traits, such as neuroticism or a predisposition
to engage in antisocial behavior, are more likely than other parents to
experience inter-parental conflict and separate. Because parents
transmit these traits to their biological children genetically, children
in these families are prone to a variety of difficulties (D'Onofrio et al.,
2007). Therefore, the links between parents' separation and children's
behavior are spurious as the causal mechanism connecting these
parents' and children's behaviors is genetically inherited predisposi-
tions. Finally, the child effects model also challenges the standard
family environment model by pointing out that, as the vast majority of
studies in this literature involves correlations derived from cross-
sectional data, the alternative explanation that children's behavior is
the cause rather than the result of parental separation is plausible.
With genetically sensitive longitudinal studies becoming increasingly
available (Sameroff & MacKenzie, 2003), comparing appropriately
these three theoretical frameworks for linking children's psychopa-
thology and fathers' non-residence is now possible. The general
conclusion so far from several studies comparing appropriately the
standard family environment with the passive genetic model is that
the origin of the association between divorce and child psychopa-
thology is shared environmental in origin (Burt, 2009). However, very
little research activity has been devoted to comparing the three
alternative models. One exception is Amato and Cheadle's (2008)
study, which, using data from adopted and biological children from
Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households, also
found strong support for the standard family environment model. The
lack of more research comparing these alternative theoretical models
and therefore determining the extent to which the parental divorce/
child psychopathology association is due to shared environment,
shared genes or reverse causality is unfortunate as the findings of such
comparisons will have important implications for both theory
development and intervention design.
3. Child psychopathology and father's parenting
The research on father's parenting and child psychopathology is
relatively less voluminous than the research linking father's non-
residence and child psychopathology, and follows mainly the
standard family environment model. Evidence from the studies
following this model is that, in general, quality of father–child
interaction is significantly associated with emotional and behavioral
outcomes in both young and older children even after controlling for
quality of mother–child interaction, that the effect of mother–child
interaction is stronger than the effect of father–child interaction on
emotional and behavioral outcomes in young children, and that
quality of father–child interaction is more important in predicting
cognitive rather than behavioral and emotional outcomes in young
children.
Of great importance in the paternal parenting–child adjustment
literature (irrespective of the theoretical model followed) is the
evidence from studies testing moderator (interaction) effects. For
example, researchers started testing the moderator effect of family
structure on the association between father's parenting and child
behavior almost as soon they became interested in the role of fathers
in child development, and studies now routinely model the effect of
the interaction between father's and mother's parenting on child
psychopathology. Research on resilience has also established the
importance of distinguishing between father's and mother's parenting
when modeling the moderator effect of parenting on children's
365
positive adaptation in the face of specific (e.g., Brennan, Le Brocque &
Hammen, 2003) and cumulative (e.g., Ge, Natsuaki, Neiderhiser &
Reiss, 2009) contextual risk.
4. The standard family environment model
Research following assumptions of the standard family environ-
ment model both increased and improved after the publication of
some important reviews in 2000 (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley,
Hofferth & Lamb, 2000; Lamb, 2000, 2004). Three recent changes that
resulted from these reviews are particularly noteworthy for both
theory development and intervention design: the emphasis on
specificity, the shift of focus on testing differential as well as absolute
parenting effects, and the gradual realization of the importance of
testing theory-driven moderator effects on the association between
child psychopathology and fathering dimensions other than
‘involvement.’
As to the first change, studies have now moved away from linearly
linking father's parenting to child psychopathology to looking for
specificity both in child adjustment – indicating whether, for instance,
the impact of fathering on children's psychological adjustment is
diagnostically specific or non-specific – and in fathering (Barber, Stolz
& Olsen, 2005; Davidov & Grusec, 2006; Enns, Cox & Clara, 2002;
Galambos, Barker & Almeida, 2003; King & Sobolewski, 2006; Murray
et al., 2006; Stolz et al., 2005). For example, we now know from
studies considering full specificity (that is, what fathering dimensions
are associated with what child outcomes) that although levels of
paternal support are related to levels of internalizing behavior
problems in children (Bean, Barber & Crane, 2006), in limiting
externalizing behavior problems paternal behavioral control rather
than support is most effective (Galambos et al., 2003). Importantly,
such studies are increasingly testing theory-driven hypotheses about
how these associations take place. For example, Flouri and colleagues
(Walton & Flouri, 2010; McEwen & Flouri, 2009) showed that
although the effect of both maternal and paternal parenting on
adolescent adjustment was via adolescent emotion regulation,
different dimensions of fathering and mothering predicted emotion
regulation difficulties. In particular, the only maternal parenting
dimension predicting emotion regulation was maternal warmth and
the only paternal parenting dimension predicting (negatively)
emotion regulation was psychological control. Taken together these
findings add to the existing evidence for the importance of parenting
for adolescents' dysregulated behavior and demonstrate the impor-
tance of paternal psychological control for adolescents dysregulated
emotion, as well.
The second change, or the recent emphasis on examining the role
not only of absolute but also of differential parenting in children's
outcomes (Feinberg & Hetherington, 2001), has significantly ad-
vanced our understanding of how fathers' parenting and children's
behaviors are related. Although, with few exceptions (Atzaba-Poria &
Pike, 2008; O'Connor, Dunn, Jenkins & Rasbash, 2006), most of this
research considers only mothering (Boyle et al., 2004), some of the
recent findings of studies looking at fathers' differential parenting and
at within family differences in fathers' and mothers' parenting are
impressive. Tamrouti-Makkink, Dubas, Gerris and van Aken (2004),
for instance, found that, although no direct association was observed
between differential parental treatment and child outcomes above the
absolute levels of parenting in same-gender sibling pairs, in mixed-
gender sibling pairs differential maternal and paternal control was
related to internalizing behavior of girls and differential paternal
warmth to externalizing behavior of the older siblings.
The third change, or the emphasis on testing moderator effects on
the association between child psychopathology and aspects of
fathering other than fathers' involvement, also improved our
understanding of how paternal parenting and child behavior are
related, but importantly for policy, identified specific groups for
366 E. Flouri / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 363–369
intervention as well. Following Lamb's (2000) and Parke's (2000)
reviews, which concluded that a restricted focus on involvement with
little if any attention paid to the other functions or aspects of
fatherhood ignores subcultural variation in the definition and
understanding of fatherhood, studies now increasingly consider
demographic and culture or subculture specificity when modeling
paternal parenting–child adjustment links. Ethnicity, for instance,
which has been routinely explored as a moderator in studies linking
father's parenting and child's behavior in the US, has started to receive
attention in the UK (Deater-Deckard, Atzaba-Poria & Pike, 2004) as
well. However, there is very limited research testing moderator
effects of father's characteristics on child psychopathology links with
certain important fathering dimensions, such as economic providing,
for instance. Although there has been a lot of research linking fathers'
absence of economic providing and children's psychological out-
comes, particularly externalizing behavior problems (Amato &
Gilbreth, 1999) in father-absent families, we know very little on the
role of father's economic providing in father-present families
(Christiansen & Palkovitz, 2001; Gadsden, Fagan, Ray & Davis,
2004), and even less on the moderator effect of father characteristics
on this association (Crouter, Davis, Updegraff, Delgado & Fortner,
2006). This is important as father's income presence may not be
associated with positive child outcomes when the father, for instance,
does not contribute to household expenses or his consumption of
resources drains the family budget especially if he spends the family's
funds for personal items or services (Engle & Breaux, 1998).
5. The child effects and the passive genetic models
In contrast to the significant increase in the number of recent
studies testing father effects models, only few studies have tested
child effects models (e.g., Coley & Medeiros, 2007; Hawkins, Amato &
King, 2007; Jaffee et al., 2004), and even fewer have compared models.
The evidence from studies comparing the passive genetic model with
the standard family environment model to explain the association
between parenting (although without usually differentiating between
mother's and father's parenting) and child psychopathology seems to
suggest that the origin of this association is largely environmental in
origin (Burt, 2009).
In general, most of the research modeling reciprocal relationships
between fathers' involvement and children's behavior tests outcomes
in school age children, and shows that among non-resident fathers
child behavior predicts father involvement rather than vice versa,
especially in disadvantaged families (Coley & Medeiros, 2007;
Hawkins et al., 2007), whereas in resident fathers the converse is
true for both involvement and other parenting dimensions (Jaffee
et al., 2004; Lifford et al., 2008). In a study of adolescent adoptees and
their families, Ge et al. (1996), for instance, measured adoptees'
genetic risk for antisocial behavior on the basis of their biological
parents' psychopathology. They found that these children elicited
more harsh and inconsistent discipline and less nurturant and
involved parenting from their adoptive parents compared with
adoptees whose biological parents did not have a history of disorder.
Although the data were cross-sectional, the researchers also
suggested reciprocal parent–child effects: Adoptees' antisocial be-
havior was influenced by and was an influence on mothers' (but not
fathers') negative parenting. More recently, Hawkins et al. (2007)
used nationally representative data from the 1995 and 1996 waves of
the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to estimate the
cross-lagged associations between non-resident fathers' involvement
and adolescents' psychopathology and achievement. They argued that
their results supported a child effects rather than a father effects
model. Given indications that fathers' behaviors may be more
influenced by contextual factors than mothers' these results, taken
together, may suggest that non-resident fathers, who show greater
variability in involvement with their children than resident fathers,
may be particularly influenced by child factors. In short, these results
suggest that the influence of non-resident fathers on children may be
significantly weaker than that of children on non-resident fathers,
whereas the influence of resident fathers on children may be
significantly stronger than that of children on resident fathers.
When studies testing child effects compare models, they still
predominantly compare mothering with fathering. For example,
Lifford, Harold and Thapar (2008), who examined the relationship
between child Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
symptoms and displays of rejection in the parent–child relationship
using cross-lagged panel correlation and reciprocal effects analysis in
a longitudinal community sample of school aged children and their
parents, showed differences in the direction of effects linking mother–
and father–child rejection and child ADHD symptoms, with ADHD
symptoms affecting the mother–child relationship and the converse
pattern of effects noted for fathers. Still, what is needed to address the
issue of comparing the three theoretical perspectives discussed above
is longitudinal studies modeling the association between fathers'
parenting and children's adjustment in samples which include good
measures of genetic risk and children from both biological and
adoptive families. I am not aware of any such study.
6. Child psychopathology and father's psychopathology
Relevant to the evidence discussed so far is the research on the
association between fathers' psychopathology and children's psycho-
pathology. The role of paternal psychopathology on child psychopa-
thology has been examined in studies since the 1980s, although a lot
of progress was made after Phares and Compas (1992) voiced the
need to routinely explore paternal psychopathology when studying
child psychopathology. A decade later Connell and Goodman's (2002)
meta-analysis concluded that, although children's internalizing
problems appear to be linked more closely to maternal than to
paternal psychopathology, children's externalizing behavior problems
appear to be linked in comparable ways to mothers' and fathers'
psychopathology. A lot of the studies modeling the association
between parental and child psychopathology find that this association
is mediated by parenting more strongly in fathers than in mothers,
and so research testing paternal and child psychopathology links
often includes paternal parenting as an intervening variable. The bulk
of these studies test the effect of paternal depression or substance
abuse on paternal parenting (Ramchandani & Psychogiou, 2009),
although some recent studies have explored links with other, less well
researched in this literature, paternal psychiatric disorders, such as
ADHD. For example, Harvey, Danforth, McKee, Ulaszek and Friedman
(2003) found that high levels of inattention and impulsivity in fathers
predicted lax parenting, over-activity and argumentativeness when
interacting with their child. More recently, Psychogiou, Daley,
Thompson and Sonuga-Barke (2008) showed that increased ADHD
symptoms in fathers interacted with the child's ADHD symptoms in
exacerbating negative parenting.
The progress in research on the association between child and
paternal psychopathology over the last decade or so has been
phenomenal. Studies, for instance, now test links between paternal
childhood psychiatric disorders and offspring psychopathology (Clark
et al., 1997) in view of the evidence that parental childhood psychiatric
disorders may be more strongly predictive of children's index case
psychiatric disorders than are parental adulthood psychiatric or
substance use disorders. They also start to consider full specificity
models of the association between paternal and child psychopathol-
ogy (King et al., 2006; Landolt, Vollrath, Timm, Grehm & Sennhauser,
2005; Olino, Lewinsohn & Klein, 2006). Still, the emphasis continues to
be on determining the effect of father's antisocial behavior and
substance abuse on child psychopathology (Kelley & Fals-Stewart,
2004), although father's depressed mood (Cummings, Keller & Davies,
2005) has started to receive a lot of attention too, with recent studies
 E. Flouri / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 363–369
exploring child psychopathology links with both maternal and
paternal postnatal depression (Ramchandani, Stein, Evans & O'Connor,
2005). In the UK, for instance, Ramchandani and colleagues showed
that, even after controlling for maternal postnatal depression and later
paternal depression, paternal depression during the postnatal
period was associated with young children's internalizing and
externalizing behavior problems and with an increased risk of conduct
problems in boys (Ramchandani et al., 2005), and that, even after
controlling for maternal anxiety, paternal anxiety in the first year of a
child's life was associated with later childhood recurrent abdominal
pain (Ramchandani, Stein, Hotopf & Wiles, 2006).
Despite this progress, research has yet to address several issues,
almost consistently identified as important (Leung & Slep, 2006; Low
& Stocker, 2005). First, it should test theory-driven hypotheses
regarding interactions between maternal and paternal psychopathol-
ogy. Although assortative mating increases the likelihood that
partners of mentally ill mothers will have some form of psychiatric
disorder (Merikangas, Prusoff & Weissman, 1988), relatively little
attention has been paid to the fathers of these children. One exception
is Marmorstein, Malone, and Iacono's (2004) community-based study
of adolescent twins, their depressed and nondepressed mothers, and
their mothers' partners (the biological fathers of the twins), which
showed that depressed mothers tended to partner with antisocial
fathers and that depression in mothers and antisocial behavior in
fathers were both significantly and independently associated with
offspring depression and conduct disorder. Second, following and
extending the theory of the importance of integrating biological and
environmental considerations within a transactional perspective
(Goodman & Gotlib, 1999) it should look systematically at interaction
effects both within and between father's/mother's parenting and
father's/mother's psychopathology. In other words, it should not only
test the effect of the interaction between paternal and maternal
psychopathology or between paternal and maternal parenting, but
also the interaction between maternal parenting and paternal
psychopathology, maternal parenting and maternal psychopathology,
paternal parenting and paternal psychopathology, and paternal
parenting and maternal psychopathology. Third, and related to this,
it should explore more systematically interactions between family
structure and father's psychopathology. Foley et al. (2004), for
instance, who investigated if family structure moderates the effect
of parental alcoholism on children's conduct disorder symptoms
showed that although girls who lived with an alcoholic stepfather had
significantly more conduct disorder symptoms than girls who lived
with an alcoholic biological father, boys who lived with an alcoholic
stepfather had significantly fewer conduct problems than boys who
lived with an alcoholic biological father. The increased risk for conduct
symptoms in boys living with an alcoholic biological father rather
than an alcoholic stepfather is consistent with a genetic correlation
between parental alcoholism and conduct disorder in boys, but the
pattern of results observed in girls is consistent with the importance
of environmental risk factors for conduct disorder in girls. Fourth, it
should test systematically alternative models of causation. Although
not many, general population longitudinal studies have tested
reciprocal effects models of paternal and child psychopathology. Ge,
Conger, Lorenz, Shanahan and Elder (1995), for instance, who used
a cross-lagged effects model with three waves of panel data to
examine mutual influences on parent and adolescent psychological
distress in mothers–sons, mothers–daughters, fathers–sons, and
fathers–daughters, showed that mutual influences in distress were
significant and gender specific, with the strongest cross-lagged
associations occurring between mothers and sons and between
fathers and daughters. However, longitudinal genetically sensitive
studies that test mutual influences on paternal and child psychopa-
thology are lacking, although genetically sensitive studies have tested
mutual influence models with regard to at least maternal psychopa-
thology (Ge et al., 1996).
367
7. Conclusions
This paper discussed some of the evidence for the links between
child psychopathology and father's residence/non-residence, parent-
ing and psychopathology, and identified priorities for future research
that will likely move forward not only the field of abnormal behavior
but that of child development in general as well. There are many
issues to be addressed in future research, and the preceding sections
pointed to several directions. Rather than reiterate these here, this
section will briefly outline three issues that it is hoped future research
will address.
First, paternal characteristics other than psychopathology, residential
transitions or parenting are still under-researched as predictors of child
psychopathology. However, given the promise of the endophenotype
approach that identifies sub-clinical traits among non-affected relatives
(Flint & Munafo, 2007; Gottesman & Gould, 2003; Viding & Blakemore,
2007), characteristics of biological, non-affected fathers of probands are
likely to feature prominently in investigations of child psychopathology
(East, Berman & Stoppelbein, 2007; Herpertz et al., 2007) in the future. In
predicting children's developmental disorders such as autistic spectrum
disorders and dyslexia, for instance, the role of paternal characteristics
such as executive function or central coherence has already been usefully
explored (De Jonge, Kemner & van Engeland, 2006; Happe, Briskman &
Frith, 2001; Hughes, Leboyer & Bouvard, 1997).
Second, the range of child outcomes considered in child psychology
and psychiatry studies investigating father's psychopathology, par-
enting, or residential transitions is still narrow (Cassano, Adrian, Veits
& Zeman, 2006; Phares, Fields, Kamboukos & Lopez, 2005). For
example, we know little about fathering and children's treatment
response or behavioral change (Bagner & Eyberg, 2003; Beauchaine,
Webster-Stratton & Reid, 2005), but also developmental disorders,
learning and communication disorders and problems in learning,
severe and persistent disorders such as pervasive developmental
disorders, and other developmental disabilities or schizophrenia
(Dykens & Hodapp, 2001; Hastings & Beck, 2004; Hastings et al.,
2005; Yirmiya & Shaked, 2005).
Third, studies following any of the three alternative models
discussed in this paper have yet to test theory-driven models of
associations between specific paternal psychopathology, specific pater-
nal parenting, and specific child psychopathology. Although, as
discussed above, studies now routinely test the association between
specific paternal parenting dimensions and specific child psychopa-
thology, and the association between specific paternal psychopathology
and specific child psychopathology, and despite the recent emphasis on
testing links between specific paternal psychopathology and specific
paternal parenting, studies rarely test full specificity in mediated models
exploring the association between all three. However, understanding
the mechanisms by which psychiatric risk is transmitted in families is
needed if successful interventions are to be developed. Addressing these
issues and testing alternative models of associations between fathers'
and children's behaviors in future research can be challenging but will
be very exciting.
Acknowledgements
The author was supported by a grant from the UK Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC), and is grateful to Michael Lamb, Paul
Ramchandani, and Lars Malmberg for their comments on earlier
versions of the article.
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