International Lecture Series DPAS on fatherhood and parental separation

Talk 1  Natasha Cabrera (Univ. of Maryland, College Park)   
Father-Child Relationships: How and Why they Matter for Children's Development

In this presentation Cabrera reviews the empirical evidence that links father involvement to children's developmental outcomes during early childhood. She take a family systems perspective that fathers' contribution to their children's development is over and above the contribution of mothers and present evidence and show evidence for direct and indirect effects exploring various mechanisms of influence. Finally, she situates her research on father involvement in a cultural context that has important implications for programs and policies.

About Natasha J. Cabrera

Natasha J. Cabrera, is Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, College of Education, at University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses on father involvement and children’s social development; ethnic and cultural variations in fathering and mothering behaviors; family processes in a social and cultural context; and the mechanisms that link early experiences to children’s school readiness. She has published in peer-reviewed journals on policy, methodology, theory and the implications of father involvement on child development. She has studied fathers for the last 15 years. In her previous position with NICHD, she developed a major initiative called Developing a Daddy Survey (DADS), which coordinated measures of father involvement across major studies in the field, provided a set of measures for others to use.

Talk 2  Pablo Gracia (Trinity College, Dublin)|
Parental Separation, Children’s Life Course and Time-Use Investments

Studying the impact of parental divorce on children’s daily activities is relevant to understand how family dynamics shape children’s skills and attitudes. Yet, research in this direction is scant. This study uses unique longitudinal cohort time-diary data from six waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (2004–2014) to investigate how family breakdown influences children’s time use. Findings show that mothers compensate for parental divorce by sharply increasing time with children just after separation, yet this trend declines over time. Father-child time steadily declines with the years after parental separation, but with quite minor changes. Parental separation leads to more time in unstructured activities, but it does not reduce the child time in educational activities. Results reveal marked differences by gender. Boys increase time in screen-based activities after parental separation, while girls augment their time alone and in educational activities. Overall, our study using high-quality longitudinal time-diary data shows that children’s time use changes after parental separation, but in different ways depending on the child gender, which might shape gendered attitudes and roles over the years.

About Pablo Gracia 

Pablo Gracia is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. He obtained a PhD in Sociology at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Dr. Gracia has previously been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies from the University of Amsterdam and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. As a lecturer and researcher, Dr. Gracia's main areas of academic interest include Family Sociology, Social Stratification, Social Demography, Cross-National Research, and Research Design. Dr Gracia has recently received the Provost PhD Project Award (2017), Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions Fund (2018) and Enterprise Ireland Project Grant (2018) to support his research on intergenerational inequalities and child development. His main ongoing projects focus on three areas: (1) Socioeconomic inequalities in parenting and child development; (2) Child and adolescent daily activities (i.e., digital activities, educational time, family activities) across different micro-macro contexts; (3) Impacts of the 24/7 economy on family life and child well-being. ​​​​​