The association among mothers’, fathers’, and infants’ risk and cognitive and social behaviors at 24 months was examined using SEM and data on 4,178 on toddlers and their parents from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. There were 3 main findings. First, for cognitive outcomes, maternal risk was directly and indirectly linked to it through maternal sensitivity whereas paternal risk was only indirectly related through maternal sensitivity. Second, for social behaviors, maternal and paternal risks were indirectly linked through maternal sensitivity and father engagement. Third, maternal and paternal levels of risk were linked to maternal supportiveness whereas mothers’ and children’s risk were linked to paternal cognitive stimulation. Implications are that policy makers must take into account effects of mothers’, children’s, and fathers’ risk on young children’s functioning.

Men in the transition to parenthood have to integrate fatherhood into their self-concepts and identities. Contemporary societies, in particular, provide two contradictory discourses for fathersto-be: (1) discourses which state that fathers are to take care of financial providing (as breadwinners), and (2) over the last decades, discourses that describe highly involved and caring fathers. Most men adopt the traditional position of a breadwinning identity and describe themselves as responsible for financial care. As a consequence they tend to show little attentiveness to their children’s needs. Still, some men take up nontraditional practices and engage in child caring. We found two types of identities for such involved fathers: the feminized fatherhood identity and the distinctive fatherhood identity. Paternal identities were formed within the discourses provided by their social environment. The identity of feminized fatherhood is characterized by rejection of other concepts, but also by a devaluation of their own position as marginalized men. The distinctive fatherhood identity, in contrast, is defined by negation of hegemonic concepts and a positive valuation of difference.

In recent decades, the concept of family has been subjected to redefinition as family scholars have debated the question of who and

Materialist process ontologies, often subsumed under the term new materialism, such as the Deleuzian materialism of Rosi Braidotti, the agential realism of Karen Barad or the posthumanism of Donna Haraway, are becoming increasingly recognized in qualitative research. In this article I argue and illustrate that these theories allow for a reconfiguration of analytical research tools without using the representationalist epistemological framework these tools are often embedded in. Karen Barad’s concept of ‘exteriority within’ is of particular help for this task. I illustrate the research practices of two research projects, which included multiple methods of data collections (interviews, observations, re-enactments), a process of analysis I call referencing and a writing technique I call rebuilding worlds.

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