Abstract
This chapter addresses the father’s involvement in the family after the birth of a second child. Parenting roles continue to evolve with the birth of each additional child; yet, few studies have considered the ways in which fathers and mothers manage the transition from one child to two and how children adjust to the birth of a sibling. Based on a family systems framework, we briefly review the literature on fathering and children’s adjustment after the second birth before presenting recent findings examining whether fathers’ involvement protects firstborn children from developing emotional and behavioral problems.
Author Note
The research reported herein was supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD042607, K02HD047423) to Brenda L. Volling.
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Volling, B.L., Steinberg, E.J., Kuo, P.X. (2020). Is It Easier the Second Time Around? Fathers’ Roles Across the Transition from One Child to Two. In: Fitzgerald, H.E., von Klitzing, K., Cabrera, N.J., Scarano de Mendonça, J., Skjøthaug, T. (eds) Handbook of Fathers and Child Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51027-5_16
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