Stepfathers may influence their children’s development differently from either biological fathers or stepmothers due to differences

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the inline gaps and future work and abstract of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 1979 and 2024, spanning 3 journals. Those papers have been cited 12 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 3 representative gaps

• Family structure and women’s mental well-being: how family stressors explain mental health inequalities between lone and partnered mothers (2024) · Frontiers in Sociology · cited 4× · doi

  Future research should examine how certain types of resources, such as social support and maternal self-concept, may buffer lone mothers against the unequal impact of their exposure to stressors. Although our decomposition approach was able to capture key stress-related mechanisms behind mental health gaps between lone and partnered mothers, future research should examine how different types of family structures—stable and changing—are associated with disparities in mothers’ mental health outcomes. Lone fathers are an understudied group that requires future attention in this field, considering Frontiers in Sociology 11 frontiersin.

  generalinline gaps
  Keywords: future lone mothers examine types mental health certain resources social support maternal self concept buffer
• Fathers! Incompetent or Reluctant Parents? (1979) · Journal of Sociology · cited 6× · doi

  While the current interest in the role of the father in child development (e.g. Biller, 1974; Lamb, 1976; Lynn, 1974; Russell, 1978b) has meant that the ratio of father to mother studies has improved, it has also highlighted many of the limitations of previous methodologies. As has already been pointed out, most of the studies have focused on nuclear families. Mother-child and father-child interactions and relationships may be entirely dit3~crent in lone parent families or in families where mothers and fathers share child care tasks in equal, (or nearly equal) fashion. This emphasis on nuclear families also serves to reinforce the cultural and professional view that other family structures are pathological. However, like so many of the other assumptions about the family, this assumption has rarely been critically evaluated. Lamb ( 1977b) in a recent paper has reviewed the available evidence on divorce, and concludes that divorce (and often therefore lone parent situations) does not necessarily affect personality dcvclopment.. One group of studies which is relevant both to the questions of different family structures and the capacity of fathers for nurturance is the series by Redican and his co-workers (see Redican, 1976). Redican has found that when adult male rhesus monkeys are isolated with in- fant monkeys, they are capable of ’diligent parental care’ similar to that displayed by mothers towards their infants. Adult males of this species (in the wild) are generally in- different, somewhat sensitive to approach and contact, occasionally aggressive, and rarely afliliative towards infants. The infant monkeys were also found to form strong attachments to their male caregivers, and did not differ signifi- cantly from the mother-reared infants in terms of developmental indices. While it is recognised that it is not possible to extrapolate from animal studies to humans, these findings are at least sug- gestive of what we might find if we examined the capacity for nurturance in the potentially more behaviourally flexible human male. Furthermore, given the emphasis that many (e.g. Bowlby, 1969) have placed on animal ob- servations to support theories about mother-child attachment, it seems more than appropriate that

  generalfuture work
  Keywords: child mother families father family redican male monkeys infants lamb nuclear lone parent mothers fathers
• Stepfathers and Adolescent Well-Being: A Systematic Literature Review (2024) · Marriage & Family Review · cited 2× · doi

  Stepfathers may influence their children’s development differently from either biological fathers or stepmothers due to differences in biological relatedness, social expectations, and relevant family processes; however, to date, little is known about the impact of stepfathers despite the increasing diversification of families.

  generalabstractevidence 5/5
  Keywords: stepfathers biological influence children development differently either fathers stepmothers differences relatedness social expectations relevant family

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