ReviewClinical child and family psychology review2021
The Premise and Promise of Activation Parenting for Fathers: A Review and Integration of Extant Literature.
Review in Clinical child and family psychology review, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Activation parenting in mothers and fathers: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Infant mental health journal · 2026Pooled it
- Father-child and mother-child activation relationships as predictors of injury-risk behaviors in preschool boys and girls.Journal of health psychology · 2026Article
- Testosterone Levels, Challenging Parenting Behavior, and Protective Parenting Behavior: A Correlational Study Among First-Time Fathers in the First Year of Fatherhood.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Activation parenting strategies and relations with child self-regulation and engagement.Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) · 2026Article
- Parent Internalizing Symptoms Associated with Parenting Behaviors and Children's Symptoms in a National Sample of Parents of School-Age Children (5-12 years).Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Article
- Relations between Yearly and Daily Patterns in Fathering and Mothering: An Application of Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling to the Family System.Parenting, science and practice · 2025Article
- Caregiver or Playmate? Fathers' and mothers' brain responses to ball-play with children.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Paternal Autonomy Support and Youth Internalizing Problems: Examining Unique Influences and Interactive Father-Mother Effects.Parenting, science and practice · 2025Article
- Paternal activation parenting and growth in children's inhibitory control across early childhood.Social development (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Best Practices for Recruiting and Retaining Fathers in Parenting Research: Insights from Fathering Researchers.Parenting, science and practice · 2025Article
- Paternal Activation as a Protective Factor against Problem Behaviors in Early Childhood.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2024Article
- The parent's and the child's internal working models of each other moderate cascades from child difficulty to socialization outcomes: Preliminary evidence for dual moderation?Development and psychopathology · 2024Article
- Elucidating mechanisms linking mothers' and fathers' mind-mindedness in infancy with children's self-regulation at early preschool age.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2024Article
- Revisiting the debate on effects of parental power-assertive control in two longitudinal studies: early attachment security as a moderator.Attachment & human development · 2023Article
- Same Behaviors, Different Outcomes: Mothers' and Fathers' Observed Challenging Behaviors Measured Using a New Coding System Relate Differentially to Children's Social-Emotional Development.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Parenting in the Context of the Child: Genetic and Social Processes.Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development · 2022Article
- Family interactions in toddlerhood influence social competence in preschool age: Accounting for genetic and prenatal influences.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although research on fathers tends to focus on mother-derived conceptualizations of caregiving, such as sensitivity, it has been theorized that fathers play a unique role in opening their children to the world by encouraging exploration and risk-taking. However, extant research on these forms of paternal caregiving is scattered across multiple related but distinct domains, namely rough-and-tumble play, challenging parenting behavior, and the activation relationship. Based on the overlap in theory and operationalizations of these domains, the present review aimed to define and operationalize a new caregiving construct: activation parenting (AP). Fathers who exhibit frequent and high-quality AP behaviors encourage children to take risks, challenge children physically and socioemotionally, and set appropriate limits during stimulating interactions to ensure safety and prevent over-arousal. Using Belsky's (1984) process of parenting model as a foundation, associations between paternal AP and characteristics of the father, his environment, and his child are reviewed, with a focus on early childhood (i.e., ages 0-5 years). The present review found some support for paternal AP occurring more frequently, but not necessarily with higher quality, when fathers had children older than one years old. Unexpectedly, the frequency and quality of paternal AP did not differ much by paternal age or indicators of socioeconomic status, or by child age or gender. In line with underlying theories, higher quality paternal AP in early childhood has been found to be associated with children's self-regulation skills and lower levels of internalizing and externalizing problems. Limitations of the current paternal AP literature are discussed and future directions for research, policy, and clinical work are proposed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
34059958What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.