Research is notably lacking on how fathers impact the mental health and behavioral problems of their adolescent children, though studies have begun to show that fathers do influence adolescents in important ways. Particularly understudied, but at high risk, are children with stepfathers and children of Mexican American heritage. A Conceptual Model is developed that emphasizes the construct of """"""""meanings"""""""" that children give to fathering behaviors. The meanings investigated derive from attribution theories and the working models and scripts tradition, which focus on the adolescent?s schema or representation of important social-emotional aspects of the father-child relationship. The Model gives rise to 6 Specific Aims: (1) identify father behaviors influencing child mental health and behavioral problems (net of mothering and other controls); (2) identify social/contextual variables predicting father behaviors; (3) identify """"""""meanings"""""""" fathering holds for children that influence mental health; (4) identify social/contextual variables predicting children?s meanings; (5) determine how meanings mediate between fathering behaviors and child mental health; and (6) determine how the above factors and relationships may differ (or be moderated) by children?s gender, ethnicity or father-types (birth-father or stepfather). A longitudinal study is proposed at two sites, Phoenix, AZ (ASU site) and Riverside-San Bernardino, CA (UCR site) that includes 400 families for three waves. Families will be evenly divided into two ethnicities (Mexican American and European American), two child genders, and two father-types (birth-father and stepfather). Families will be recruited through schools. Multi-agent reporting will be used for most constructs, with relevant reports obtained from mother, father, child, teacher, and school records. Most variables are assessed with standardized instruments that have been successfully used with Spanish-speaking respondents in previous studies. Most of the proposed ?meanings"""""""" measures have been designed specifically for this study, successfully pre-tested, and include narrative and """"""""quasi-narrative"""""""" methods. A 4-cohort, cohort sequential design is employed and the Specific Aims are analyzed with Latent Growth Models.
