Peer-reviewed article
Prenatal readiness for fatherhood, paternal engagement, and child social-emotional competence.
Alp Aytuglu, Clare R Thomas, Cullin J Howard, Yating Huang, Jonique Y Freeman et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study followed 126 unmarried Black American fathers from pregnancy through their children's toddlerhood to understand how fathers' readiness for parenthood before birth relates to how involved they are with their infants and their children's social-emotional development. Researchers identified three groups: fathers with high readiness, mixed readiness, and low readiness for fatherhood based on their confidence, desire for children, relationship quality, and economic stress. Children whose fathers had high readiness showed better social-emotional skills at 12-18 months compared to children whose fathers had low or mixed readiness. Fathers with low readiness engaged in less caregiving with their infants.
Key points
- Three distinct prenatal readiness profiles emerged: high, mixed, and low readiness for fatherhood
- Children of high-readiness fathers showed more optimal socioemotional competence in toddlerhood
- Low-readiness fathers engaged in significantly less caregiving with their infants
- Prenatal readiness was based on paternal self-efficacy, desire for children, beliefs about the paternal role, relationship quality, family history, and economic stress
- Indirect effects through paternal engagement were not statistically significant, suggesting other mechanisms link readiness to child outcomes
Limitations
The study is observational and cannot establish causation; it focuses only on unmarried Black American fathers in the southeastern US, limiting generalizability to other populations and family structures.
Abstract
The present study utilized a person-centered approach to identify profiles of prenatal readiness for parenthood among a sample of 126 unmarried Black American fathers living in the southeastern United States. Further, prenatal readiness for fatherhood profiles were examined as predictors of distal outcomes of both paternal engagement in early infancy and socioemotional competence in toddlerhood. Expectant fathers reported prenatally on a series of intrapersonal, relational, and contextual variables indicative of their preparation for fatherhood. Fathers also reported on their paternal engagement in early infancy when children were 3-6 months of age. Mothers reported on children's socioemotional competence when they were approximately 12-18 months old. A latent profile analysis revealed three distinct readiness for fatherhood profiles defined as high readiness, mixed readiness, and low readiness based on expectant Black American fathers' prenatal parenting self-efficacy, desire for children, beliefs about the paternal role, interparental relationship quality, caregiving sensitivity in the family of origin, and economic distress. Results indicated that children of fathers in the high readiness profile showed more optimal socioemotional competence compared to children whose fathers were in the low and mixed readiness profiles. Indirect effects from profile membership to socioemotional competence via paternal engagement were not supported, but fathers in the low readiness profile did engage in less caregiving with their children relative to fathers in other profiles. Although mediating mechanisms remain unclear, findings suggest heterogeneity in unmarried Black American fathers' patterns of readiness for parenting in the prenatal period, with implications for children's early socioemotional development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- No intervention was tested; this is an observational study examining natural variation in paternal readiness
- Population
- 126 unmarried Black American fathers in the southeastern United States and their children
Key finding
High-readiness fathers' children showed more optimal socioemotional competence compared to low and mixed-readiness profiles
Aytuglu et al. · PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) · 10 Jul 2025