Parents’ Relative Socioeconomic Status and Paternal Involvement in Chinese Families: The Mediating Role of Coparenting

Abstract

This study examined the mediating role of coparenting in the association between differences/similarities in paternal and maternal socioeconomic status (SES) and paternal involvement in Chinese families. The sample included 244 couples with children aged 3–7 years. Fathers and mothers reported their individual incomes, educational levels, occupations, and coparenting behavior (measured using the Coparenting Scale), and fathers completed the Father Involvement Questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was performed to examine the associations between SES and paternal involvement. Results suggested that SES indicator measures were outcome specific. Occupational differences/similarities were associated with paternal involvement indirectly, via fathers’ family integrity practices. Income and educational differences/similarities did not affect paternal involvement. The results suggested that the traditional Chinese view that “men are chiefly responsible for activity in society, while women are responsible for the home” has faded.

Differential Patterns of the Division of Parenthood in Chinese Family: Association With Coparenting Behavior

“…Coparenting is the characteristic of the executive subsystem, which underlines the significance of coparenting to family life (Minuchin, 1974; Feinberg, 2003). Previous studies have affirmed that positive coparenting promoted positive parent–child interactions and increased parental individual involvement in parenting activities (Liu et al, 2016; Pilkington et al, 2019). These studies have emphasized coparenting as a family-level factor for influencing individual involvement, but less is known about the dynamics of the individual behaviors of fathers and mothers during the coparenting process.…”

“…However, fathers may contribute more than mothers to the interaction of cooperative coparenting (Murphy et al, 2017). Fathers’ consistent coparenting behavior means that fathers are supportive of the behavior and parenting decision of mothers (McHale, 1997; Liu et al, 2016). Therefore, the dominance of fathers in family work would be regarded as obedience to the decisions of mothers.…”

“…Moreover, father and mother disparagement behavior did not significantly distinguish the parent-cooperation pattern from the other two patterns. One possible answer to this question was that disparagement behavior was covert and not easily realized (Liu et al, 2016).…”

“…Mother and father involvement were measured using the inventory of parent involvement, which was based on the construction of Lamb’s theory (Wu et al, 2015). This inventory has been used widely in China (Zou et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2016), and it has also been used for measuring mother involvement because of the claim that mother and father involvement are conceptually equivalent (Fagan et al, 2014; Hou et al, 2018). The inventory included three dimensions with 56 items.…”

“…Previous studies have confirmed that coparenting has a strong and steady predictive role on mother and father involvement (Morrill et al, 2010; Goldberg, 2015). Specifically, according to the spillover-crossover hypothesis of family system theory pertaining to the intrapersonal and interpersonal transfer of affect and behavior (Erel and Burman, 1995), mother and father coparenting behavior influenced not only his or her own involvement but also their spouse’s involvement in parenting their child (Liu et al, 2016). As observed, the current study is the first to combine father/mother involvement or examine the diverse division of parenthood patterns.…”