In most cases I would say yes, at least according to the literature. However our data from a Turkish immigrant cohort in Germany suggest that if the father has adverse socio-economic background (low education, low language abilities, unemployed, etc.) he may negatively influence both the mother (higher stress levels) and his children's development. We have never explicitly published this but these two papers hint at these associations:

Jäkel, J., Leyendecker, B., & Agache, A. (2014). Family and individual factors associated with Turkish immigrant and German children’s and adolescents’ mental health. Journal of Child and Family Studies. doi: 10.1007/s10826-014-9918-3.

Jaekel, J., Schölmerich, A., Kassis, W., & Leyendecker, B., (2011). Mothers' and fathers' bookreading predicts preschoolers' development in Turkish immigrant and German families. International Journal of Developmental Science, 5, 27-39.

Thanks for your answer. However, it is doubt me. When talking about of socioeconomic status, I think this is a broad construct, and would be very important to further refine that we are talking about: income level, education level, current employment status. What do you think about this?.

In our experience, the most important variable is the educational level than the poverty level (both mother and father) that affects the outcomes of development of the children.

yes, education is the relevant SES indicator for child development

My understanding is that what parents do with their children in the home is more important than SES, so if parents take their children to libraries, play interactive social games with them, talk to them in non-directive ways and encourage children's participation in everyday social routines, regardless of the parents educational achievement or the family's income level, children do well.

I completely agree - but these more proximal factors are usually highly correlated with SES. With regard to Turkish immigrants, one of the most important proximal factors promoting child development may be the Home Literacy Environment.

I agree with you. I would like to know your opinion regarding the role of the conflict and marital satisfaction in the level of involvement of fathers in the care and upbringing of their children?

I can only speak about the Turkish immigrant samples we have as I have not looke at these associations in other at-risk samples: with regard to fathers, there are certain distal factors such as first generation immigrant status (combined with a second generation mother), unemployment, and very low SES that can negatively affect the marital relationship. In these cases, there is an indirect effect of fathers on child development. In addition, if fathers are then highly involved they may have directly detrimental effects.

But I don't like to focus on the negative effects, I am rather interested in protective factors. And here we can say that usually highly involved fathers who try to stimulate their children's development have extremely important positive influence.

The results of my own research conducted on adolescents shows:

The relationship with father is important to the child's self-esteem. Father is significant persons in the child's life.

Children that his relationship with his father as the estimated relationship in which there is understanding, support, security, and confidence have a better image of themselves.

Children that his relationship with his father as the estimated relationship in which there is a misunderstanding, conflict, punishment, excessive demands have lower self-esteem.

The relationship with his father during predadolescencije and adolescence plays a significant role in the development of self-esteem.

I conducted some studies on mother-father-infant interactions and the role of paternal psychological profiles on children's emotional and behavioural functioning, both in clinical and healthy samples.

I found that, even if the weight of maternal characteristics is really important, paternal psychopathological risk may have a specific role and be associated with children disadaptive functioning.

For example:

DOI: 10.1007/s10578-014-0462-6

DOI: 10.1002/erv.2218

father's involvement in child's well being is well researched and thesef studies suggest that fathers who are involved, nurturing, and playful with their infants have children with higher IQs, as well as better linguistic and cognitive capacities. Young children with involved fathers go on to start school with higher levels of academic readiness that it helps in positive development of a child.

In my view the children with involved fathers can handle stress and failures readily than with less involved fathers. The self acceptance and self esteem is also better in the cildren with involved fathers.

This reply is not 100% on topic, but you all may be interested in the fathers in Solomon & George's divorce study with infants and correlates and sequelae in high conflict divorce. The baseline study and a follow up are attached.

Here are the attachments.

Also, I am doing a father of young children study, looking at coparenting alliance and child well being. The study is in English and Spanish. Do encourage fathers living in with children between the ages of 1-36 mo. to participate - by going to the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FathersPerspective

Thank you all for your valuable and interesting answers. In the coming months I will do my doctoral dissertation on this topic and I hope to share my findings with you.

Hi Milton,

I had done a research in the area of parent and well-being among athlete students,

Results showed that there are a positive relationships between father autonomy-supportive with positive affect and subjective vitality and negative association with negative affect, but my samples were athlete students and not child,

Hope this help.

You can see also my paper on my page:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Behzad_Behzadnia2?ev=hdr_xprf

I am looking forward to read your findings Milton! Specifically because research based on attachment theory is still scarce in Latin American countries. The pioneering work done by your Colombian colleagues (Posada, Carbonell, et al.) is very valuable, but focuses on mother-child dyads. Can you explain to us a little bit further your design? I am currently finishing my doctoral dissertation also, and I am exploring children-professional secondary caregivers attachment in Mexican Childcare facilities, so we are both exploring relationships different than the mother-infant in LA contexts.

Hello Fernando , I am sending my doctoral proposal to make the comments that you consider relevant. 

Regards

Hello,

i have just published on the Infant Mental Health Journal a manuscript entitled "Mother-child and father-child interaction with their 24-month-old children during feeding, considering paternal involvement and the child’s temperament in a community sample". Besides other results, we found that paternal involvement is a protective factor for the quality of father-child interactions only when the child's temperament is easy (in particular when Social Orientation scores are higher).

Regards

Luca