Putting fathers back in the picture: Parental activities and children's adult outcomes

Drawing on over a quarter of a century of Panel Study of Income Dynamics da ta, this paper examines links between childhood home environment las report ed by fathers during those childhood years) and children's outcomes in earl y adulthood. The emphasis is on the role of fathers and the unique contribu tion of their activities and characteristics to children's development, mea sured in terms of the children's completed schooling, wage rates, and nonma rital childbearing in early adulthood. The paper shows that fathers' abilit ies add substantial predictive power to models based on maternal characteri stics. Fathers' church attendance and the precautionary actions of parents are also strong predictors of children's adult outcomes, although different ially so fur sons and daughters.