This article explores the cultural construction of fatherhood in America, as well as the consequences of this construction as a motivator for understudying fathers—especially father love—for nearly a century in developmental and family research. It then reviews evidence from 6 categories of empirical studies showing the powerful influence of fathers’ love on children's and young adults’ social, emotional, and cognitive development and functioning. Much of this evidence suggests that the influence of father love on offspring's development is as great as and occasionally greater than the influence of mother love. Some studies conclude that father love is the sole significant predictor of specific outcomes after controlling for the influence of mother love. Overall, father love appears to be as heavily implicated as mother love in offsprings’ psychological well-being and health, as well as in an array of psychological and behavioral problems.

Cross-cultural and intra-cultural comparative research into the relationship between paternal behaviors and offspring development has tended to overlook the influence of paternal warmth by assessing only the physical availability of the father or by focusing on parental versus paternal and maternal warmth. Consequently, this article uses comparative methodology to explore the relationship between warm and affectionate paternal behavior and offspring behavior in diverse sociocultural contexts. Results show that paternal physical availability is a much less significant construct for predicting paternal influences on offspring functioning than is paternal warmth and that codes for paternal physical availability are not profitable or beneficial proxies for paternal warmth and affection. Finally, the findings indicate that paternal warmth is often a more significant predictor of youths' functioning than is maternal warmth. These cross-cultural comparative findings are consistent with multivariate studies done in the United States during the last decade.

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This study explores the following question: Are rural African American and European American youths' experiences of paternal and maternal acceptance equally related to their self-reported psychological adjustment, or do youths' experiences of paternal acceptance account for an independent portion of the variance in psychological adjustment, over and above the portion of variance explained by their experiences of maternal acceptance? This study also explores possible social-class, age, gender, and paternal-residence differences in perceived paternal and maternal acceptance and youths' psychological adjustment. The research is based on a proportional, stratified, random sample of 281 African American and European American families in a poor, rural, biracial county of Georgia, U.S.A. Results of multiple regression analyses indicate that only perceived paternal acceptance is significantly related to European American youths' self-reported psychological adjustment when controlling for the influence of perceived maternal acceptance. In African American families, both perceived paternal acceptance and perceived maternal acceptance are significantly related to youths' self-reported psychological adjustment. Finally, results of analyses indicate that relationships between perceived