Sex Roles, VoL 18, No. 3/4, 1988

The Emergent Father Role 1 Doris R. Entwisle 2

The Johns Hopkins University Susan D o e r i n g 2

Towson State University

Using data collected before and after birth o f a couple's first child, change in each parent's view o f men as fathers was investigated in a short-term longitudinal study. Semantic differential scales tapped the man's image o f self as father, the woman's image o f husband as father, and each parent's rating o f the baby's adjustment. Interview questions provided information on circumstances o f the birth, the father's early child care activities, and parents" previous child care experience. Men's judgments o f their own effectiveness as fathers declined from before the birth to afterward. Wives'judgments o f their husbands" effectiveness as fathers also declined over that same period, but wives rated husbands higher than husbands rated themselves at both times. A single-equation multiple regression model, adapted from a structural model, was estimated to explain c h a n g e in both spouses" ratings o f the man's paternal role competence. It revealed that working-class spouses agreed on the basis for their judgments o f the father's role performance, in that both judged him mainly in terms o f how much he participated in child care. Middle-class spouses disagreed on the basis f o r their judgments o f fathers, however. The middle-class men rated their own performance in the father role mainly in terms o f the baby's adjustment; if they judged the baby to be happier, they judged themselves to be more competent as fathers. The middle-class women did not rate fathers on that basis. Instead, the middle-class women's ratings responded to the circumstances o f the birth and to the father's participation in child care chores. Findings are discussed in terms o f family

1This research was supported by NIMH Grant No. MH15735 and earlier by NICHD Grant No. HD 13103. 2Correspondence may be addressed to either author: Dorris R. Entwisle, 560 Mergenthaler Hall, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218; Susan Doering, Department of Sociology, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204. 119 0360-0025/88/0200-0119506.00/0

© 1988 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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role theory, social-class differences in the father's role, and recent change in expectations for men's parental role.

Despite the burgeoning research on the male sex role, research on how fathers acquire their parental role has been relatively neglected. In the older child development literature, fathers were very rarely included. Parenting was conceptualized in terms of mother's influence on children (Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Stayton, Hogan, & Ainsworth, 1971; Yarrow, Rubenstein, & Pedersen, 1975) or in terms of how babies affected maternal-infant interaction (Anderson, Vietze, & Dokecki, 1977; Etzel & Gewirtz, 1967; Stern, Beebe, Jaffee, & Bennett, 1977). In the earlier sociological literature, parenting of either spouse was seen as an issue mainly in connection with how the "crisis" accompanying arrival of a first child affected the couple's marital satisfaction (Dyer, 1963; Hobbs, 1965; 1968; Hobbs & Cole, 1976; Hobbs & Wimbish, 1977; Jacoby, 1969; Larsen, 1966; LeMasters, 1957; Meyerowitz & Feldman, 1966; Russell, 1974). But recent work, reviewed below, takes a more comprehensive and balanced view. Parenting of fathers as well as of mothers is now being studied and other aspects of family functioning besides marital satisfaction are being investigated in relation to parenting. This paper continues these more recent traditions; it focuses on the man's transition into the parent role as perceived by both spouses. Changes in sex role expectations would be expected to have a profound impact on how men make the transition to parenthood. Men's expectations for their own role performance as parents and their wives' expectations for them in that role are far different from what they were two decades ago. There used to be strong norms toward women having exclusive responsibility for neonates and young infants. This is now changing, but often men's responsibilities and opportunities are unclear. And in adjusting to a first birth, men's roles vis-~i-vis their young infants are complicated by their lack of role models earlier in their lives. So far not much research has been directed at how men take up the father role. Family role theory (Nye, 1976) argues that since family roles encompass the essential activities of family life, the more competently each spouse fulfills the parental role, the greater the rewards provided for other family members. Ability to fill the parental role competently may depend on who is making the evaluation, however. A husband's ideas of fatherly competence need not correspond with those of his wife. Fatherly competence may also depend on the challenges to it. The wife's reactions to the infant, for example, may ease or intensify the demands placed upon the husband. And a fretful baby may pose more of a challenge to both parents than a placid baby (McKim, 1987). Other factors that would make parental role perfor-

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mance more difficult, also not subject to the husband's control, could include cesarean delivery. Delivery mode could affect parents' judgments of paternal competence because women who have delivered by cesarean usually need more help in the early postpartum than do women who have delivered vaginally (Consensus Report, 1981) and they look to their husbands for all or part of that help (Entwisle, 1986). Family role theory also emphasizes the suddenness with which parents must adopt their new roles. When a child arrives, the change is a b r u p t - n e w roles must be quickly integrated with old. And role definitions of new parents, like other family roles, are affected by the parents' social-class position (Hoffman, 1978; Steffensmeier, 1982). Middle-class parents probably have more latitude in defining their roles and define their roles in less stereotyped ways than do working-class parents. If family roles are defined and negotiated differently by middle-class and working-class individuals, the tasks set by a first birth are not necessarily the same for parents of the two classes. The transition to fatherhood is thus not necessarily the same for all fathers. We suspect, because of the differences in their role concepts, that it may be easier for working-class parents than for middle-class parents to conform to the sudden role demands that a family's first birth imposes. Working-class parents, because their roles are more stereotyped, could follow previously defined and well-understood role standards for parenting when a first child arrives. Middle-class parents, on the other hand, might need to fashion a particularized role for themselves. If true, the abruptness of the transition to parenthood could pose quite different tasks for middleand working-class fathers, with the working-class ones temporarily favored for making the adjustment. If their roles are more stereotyped and require less negotiation, they could make the transition more easily. Suggestive data on women's early transition to parenthood reveals a social-class difference of this kind, with working-class women apparently making the transition to parenthood more quickly than do middle-class women (Reilly, Entwisle, & Doering, 1987). The same could be true for men. Several recent longitudinal studies describe various aspects of men's transition to fatherhood. Grossman, Eichler, and Winikoff (1980), for example, focused on men's psychological health and marital adjustment over the perinatal period. They found that first-time fathers who identified more strongly with their own mothers, who were more confident, and whose sexual satisfaction was relatively high had greater emotional well-being when their babies were two months old than did fathers with lower levels of those characteristics. The LaRossas (1981) analyzed the birth transition in terms of change to a "continuous-coverage family system" whereby one parent or the other is responsible for baby care even when the infant is sleeping. They noticed role-

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distancing behavior of new fathers--every couple at least once referred to the husband as "helping" the wife with the baby, whereas not a single couple defined the wife's parental responsibilities in parallel terms. Other recent studies describe the father's participation in household chores and child care (Belsky, Spanier, & Ronne, 1983), how the early father-infant relationship responds to the wife's prepartum confidence in the father (Crawford, 1983), how the father's involvement with the baby depends on both marital quality and parents' attitudes during the pregnancy (Feldman, Nash & Aschenbrenner, 1983), and how the father's perceptions of infant temperament affects his personality (Sirignano & Lachman, 1985). As mentioned, the focus of this short-term longitudinal study is on change in both parents' perceptions of the father's role competence. Information obtained from both parents before and after the birth of a couple's first child is used to estimate a model that explains how men's concepts of themselves as fathers, and their wives' concepts of them as fathers, evolved in the earliest days of parenthood. A major aim is to see whether the nature of this transition is the same for fathers from the two social-class backgrounds. Another aim is to see how spouses' conceptions of the father's role performance are affected by the father's participation in child care and perceptions of the infant's temperament.

METHOD

The data to be analyzed here are drawn from a larger study in which a volunteer sample of Maryland women having a first child, and 50% of their husbands, were followed prospectively from the sixth/seventh month of the pregnancy to a point several weeks after the birth. The purpose of the larger study was to provide rich descriptive data relative to these parents' reactions and behaviors over the period of a couple's first birth. The data were collected between 1972 and 1976. Full information about the sample and other aspects of this research is available in Entwisle and Doering (1981).

Subjects The subjects of the study were 120 Caucasian first-time mothers-to-be and 60 of their husbands, first interviewed early in the third trimester of the woman's pregnancy. All later delivered live infants. The women were located in several different ways: (1) The local Childbirth Education Association furnished the names of all primiparous women who had recently called the organization to inquire about classes, and who were currently in their sixth

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month of pregnancy or less. About half of the sample was recruited by this means. (2) Another source of names of pregnant women was a local diaper service that sponsored classes for expectant mothers. The nurse who taught these classes furnished lists of all the women who signed up. About 10°/0 of the sample came from this source. (3) Other pregnant women were located by referral from women already in the sample. This was our main source of women who did not plan to take childbirth preparation classes. About 40°7o of the sample came through this "snowball" technique. One-half of the women in the sample were from middle-class backgrounds, one-half from working-class backgrounds. Social class was determined according to the occupation of the woman's father while she was growing up. There are several reasons for basing couples' social-class designation on this criterion rather than on husband occupation. (1) Because couples were in the initial years of marriage, the husband's education and/or long-term occupation was not settled. Some husbands, for example, were students with low incomes, but their eventual income would be much higher. (2) Many questions in the interviews are closely related to the wife's prior socialization and upbringing. Such matters as methods of disciplining young children, breastfeeding, or sex role ideology, for example, would be expected to be more closely related to sex role socialization in the woman's family of origin than to class-related aspects of her present (recent) family identification. (3) At this stage of family life, many decisions involving the wife would be expected to be class-related. Decisions about whether or not the wife works, for example, may depend on the wife's educational level, and decisions about what kind of preparation to seek for childbirth are likely to be strongly affected by wives' preferences. Thus if there is a true difference between husband and wife in social class, the wife's social class may be more important as a stratifying variable for this research. However, the social-class division of this sample would be little changed (12 cases) if husband's occupation rather than wife's father's occupation were used as the criterion of classification. Social class was rated using Siegel's (1971) index. In couples where women had fathers who were professionals, proprietors, managers, owners of small businesses and the like, the couple was classified as middle class. In couples where women had fathers who were manual workers of relatively high skills, the couple was classified as working class. Table I gives further details concerning the social class coding scheme. After the wife of a couple had agreed to participate, we personally contacted her husband and sought his participation. Because of funding limitations, we sought a sample of 60 husbands. Some husbands had been married before. If the previous marriage had produced a child, the husband was not asked to participate. This requirement eliminated 9 husbands. Of the remaining husbands, 61 were interviewed, including 3 who had previous childless

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Entwisle and Doering Table I. Demographic Information on the Samplea

Age, wife Age, husband Education, wife Education, husband Job prestige, c wife Job prestige, c husband

Middle-classb Standard Mean deviation 25.5 2.4 27.7 3.1 15.3 1.5 17.0 2.5 51.2 12.0 57.7 16.7

Working-class b Standard Mean deviation 23.9 3.0 26.1 4.0 13.3 1.9 14.0 2.4 42.2 13.0 43.2 13.5

~Obtained from interview of women in sixth month of pregnancy. bClassis assigned to the woman's father's occupation while she was growing up using the Siegel(1971) index. Women whose fathers were professionals, proprietors, managers, owners of small businesses, and the like are classified as middle-class. The working-class group is composed primarily of women whose fathers were manual workers of relatively high-skill levels. U.S. Census Categories 0, 1, 2, were always classed as "middle," while Census Categories 4 and above were always classed as "lower." Census Category 3 was sometimes classified as middie, sometimes lower. For example, door-to-door salesmen with less than a high-school education were classed as lower, while salesmen for a trucking firm or buyers for a family-owned store with a year or two of college were classed as middle. CRatings based on Siegel (1971). m a r r i a g e s . (One interview was later lost, leaving 60 m e n with p r e p a r t u m interviews.) O f the 50 eligible h u s b a n d s n o t interviewed, 33 were classified as having n o valid r e a s o n for declining to be interviewed. F o r t u n a t e l y , the p a r t i c i p a t i o n o f h u s b a n d s t u r n e d o u t n o t to be c o n t i n g e n t o n social class, for 28 h u s b a n d s whose wives were middle-class agreed to p a r t i c i p a t e a n d 32 husb a n d s w h o s e wives were w o r k i n g - c l a s s agreed. O f t h e 60 h u s b a n d s w h o consented to be interviewed, one w o r k i n g - c l a s s m a n a n d t w o middle-class m e n h a d b e e n p r e v i o u s l y m a r r i e d . These percentages were so small as to p r e c l u d e a n y s e p a r a t e analysis f o r p r e v i o u s l y m a r r i e d h u s b a n d s . O n l y t w o wives h a d been m a r r i e d b e f o r e . T o detect possible biases i n t r o d u c e d b y h u s b a n d ' s willingness to participate, w o m e n ' s characteristics as r e p r e s e n t e d b y 236 d i f f e r e n t variables were s t u d i e d in r e l a t i o n to w h e t h e r o r n o t the h u s b a n d p a r t i c i p a t e d . (see Entwisle & D o e r i n g , 1981, p p . 280-284). T h e r e a p p e a r n o consequences o f h u s b a n d self-selection t h a t are i m p o r t a n t for the analyses to be presented here. In particular, there were no differences in h u s b a n d b a b y care variables as r e p o r t e d b y w o m e n whose h u s b a n d s p a r t i c i p a t e d as c o m p a r e d to those whose husb a n d s declined. In fact, the o n l y i m p o r t a n t difference, a n d one p r o b a b l y n o t critical to the analysis here, was in the w o m a n ' s breastfeeding behavior. W o m en whose h u s b a n d s p a r t i c i p a t e d were m o r e likely t o b r e a s t f e e d . S u m m a r y d e m o g r a p h i c s are p r e s e n t e d in T a b l e I. O n l y f o u r w o m e n r e t u r n e d to o u t s i d e e m p l o y m e n t within the first t w o m o n t h s a f t e r the b i r t h .

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Procedure The 60 husbands were interviewed by male interviewers about one month before the birth and 57 of them were reinterviewed 4 to 8 weeks after the birth. All wives of the 60 interviewed men, plus wives of 60 other men who did not participate directly in the research, were interviewed by female interviewers twice, about one month prepartum and again 2 or 3 weeks postpartum. The interviews, which took 3-3.5 hours, were taped and later transcribed. All questions from which information in the current study was derived were coded by at least two coders blind to the respondent's identity, and agreement exceeded 85 °70. Complete descriptions of the subjects and the entire content of the interviews are available in Entwisle and Doering (1981). Information obtained from men by interview included semantic differential ratings of "myself as father" and "my baby." Other information obtained by interview that is pertinent to the present analysis related to the man's previous child care experience, the degree to which he participated in the birth, and his involvement in child care in the first few weeks. Information obtained from women by interview included semantic differential ratings of "My husband as father" and "My baby." Women's previous child care experience, judgments of the husband's involvement in child care, and views of the husband's participation in the birth were also ascertained.

Measures Means and standard deviations for all variable are given by separate social-class groups in Table II. There are no significant differences between social-class group means at any one point in time. Father Ratings. Semantic differential ratings were used to measure both parents' evaluation of the father in his paternal role. Using 20 bipolar adjectives, the parents rated the father's role competence both before and after the birth. The women rated "husband as father" while the men rated "self as father." The fathers' ratings were factor analyzed first, using standard procedures, and then screened to locate a "potency" factor in order to assess father's judged role effectiveness as a parent. (See Smith, 1968, and Franks and Marolla, 1976, for prior research using Osgood's semantic differential to measure judgments of role competence.) The final set of items were selected according to whether ioadings were consistently large in analyses of fathers' ratings procured over both interviews. The four items identified as determinants of the man's perception of self as father included "powerful-helpless," "brave-scared," "strong-weak," and "capable-fumbling."

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Table If. Means, Standard Deviations, and Pairwise Correlations for Variables in

Model Middle-class (Men, N = 26; Women, N = 56)

Self as father, before the birth (SFB) Self as father, after the birth (SFA) Husband as father, before the birth (HFB) Husband as father, after the birth (HFA) Man's prior baby care experience (PRE-H) Woman's prior baby care experience (PRE-W) Participation in birth, rated by father (PART-H) Participation in birth, rated by mother (PART-W) Husband involvement in child care (INV-H) rated by him Husband involvement in child care (INV-W) rated by wife Perceived infant adjustment, husband (IA-H) Perceived infant adjustment, wife (IA-W) Delivery mode (DEL-H) Delivery mode (DEL-W)

Working-class (Men, N = 29; Women, N = 55)

Mean

Standard deviation

Mean

Standard deviation

23.15 21.19

3.34 3.12

22.14 21.21

3.32 3.12

24.59

2.57

23.80

3.28

23.36

3.23

22.78

3.81

1.92

0.56

1.86

0.35

1.59

0.87

1.93

0.94

22.97

6.66

21.48

6.69

21.80

6.75

21.64

6.74

7.92

3.73

6.48

3.35

9.95

3.86

9.35

4.81

11.00

2.30

11.76

1.72

11.30 0.12 0.18

1.94 0.33 0.39

11.71 0.14 0.16

1.73 0.35 0.37

Men (Middle-Class Below Diagonal, Working-Class Above) SFB SFA PRE-H PART-H DEL-H INV-H IA-H

SFB

SFA

-.617 .220 .037 - .274 -.333 .312

.231 -.105 .132 -.023 -.198 .585

PRE-H -.106 .027 --.462 .051 -271 .093

PART-H

DEL-H

INV-H

IA-H

-.072 -.332 .273 -.416 .143 -.052

.320 .038 -.130 -.273 -.041 .107

-.099 .488 .180 .032 -.059 -.159

.367 .308 -.175 -.417 .234 -.146 --

Women (Middle-Class Below Diagonal, Working-Class Above) HFB HFB HFA PRE-W PART-W DEL-W INV-W IA-W

-

.530 .014 -.171 -.126 -.042 .517

HFA

PRE-W

PART-W

DEL-W

INV-W

IA-W

.535 -.100 .230 .021 .245 .425

-.107 -.066 -.044 -.102 -.115 -.021

.022 .000 -.126 -.434 .108 .249

-.123 -.052 -.177 -.205 -.067 -.340

.016 .282 .061 -.048 .101 -.129

.362 .392 .021 -.093 -.011 .257 --

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Women's ratings of husband as father were separately factor analyzed. The same four items selected from men's interviews were consistently among items that had satisfactory loadings for women. Accordingly, these same four items were used to measure women's perceptions of husband as father. Thus, there are ratings o f the husband's effectiveness as a father as judged by him and as judged by his wife, before and after the birth for both spouses. Scores, which ranged from 1 to 7 on the four items, were summed to measure "self as father before" (SFB) when measured in the ninth month o f pregnancy, and "self as father after" (SFA) when measured 4 to 8 weeks postpartum. The alpha reliability for SFB is .88 for middle-class fathers and .63 for working-class fathers. The alpha reliability for SFA is .62 for middleclass fathers and .29 for working-class fathers. Semantic differential scores for the same items, taken from the women's interviews, were summed to measure women's perceptions of husband as father. The women's ratings were obtained in the ninth month of pregnancy (HFB) and again 2 or 3 weeks postpartum (HFA). The alpha reliability for HFB is .82 for middle-class women and .82 for working class women. The alpha reliability for H F A is .82 for middle-class and .81 for working class women. Infant Ratings. A few weeks after the delivery both spouses rated "my baby" on 20 bipolar adjectives using the same kind of semantic differential instrument as was used to obtain ratings of the father. Factor analysis identified a single factor pertaining to each parent's perception of the infant's temperament consisting of two items: "sad-happy" and "angry-peaceful." This construct was intended to tap a domain similar to "infant adjustment" as identified by Shereshefsky and Yarrow (1973) and also by Grossman et al. (1980). Scores ranging from 1 to 7 for the two items were summed to form the indicator of the parent's perception of infant adjustment. It is labeled IA when based on women's replies and IAH when based on men's replies. The alpha reliability for IA is .80 for middle-class women and .95 for working-class women. The alpha reliability for IAH is .82 for middle-class men and .70 for working-class men. The correlation between men's and women's ratings of infant adjustment is .008 for middle-class couples and .247 (p = .10) for working-class couples. Husband Participation in Birth. This variable, which measures the husband's participation during labor and delivery, is based on six questions. The first item is how the wife thought her husband felt during labor, whether he was with her for all o f it, part of it, or none o f it. His feelings were coded from 1 (very negative) to 6 (enthusiastic). The second item involved the wife's perception o f how her husband felt during delivery, whether he was present or not. It was coded identically to the first item. The third item asked women how they felt about their husbands being or not being with them during labor. Responses were coded as for the first two items, from 1 to 6. The

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fourth item asked women how they felt about their husbands being or not being with them during delivery- again, with the same scoring. For the fifth item respondents were asked what their husbands did that helped most during labor. After that action was described, they were asked what else their husbands had done that helped, and were pressed until they could not think of anything else. These discussions were coded as follows: 0, husband wasn't there; 1, there, but did nothing, 2, "nothing" but turns out to be something; 3, '~iust being there" 4, being there, plus specific help; 5, several helpful activities; 6, really helpful, constantly busy. For the sixth item respondents were asked about husband's help during delivery in the same manner as for labor. The coding was similar to that for the fifth item, running from husband not there to really helpful. The alpha reliability for this scale is .84. The correlation between the measure of this variable based on wives' replies and a measure based on husbands' replies for couples where both responded is .83. Because the correlation between a scale derived from husbands' replies to similar questions and the parallel scale derived from women's replies is approximately equal to the reliability of the women's (longer) scale, the variable based on the women's replies is used here to measure husband participation in delivery for the men as well as for the women. The alpha reliability for PART-H is .82. for middle-class and working-class women. Delivery Mode. A dummy variable (CSECT) indicates delivery mode: 0, vaginal delivery; 1, cesarean delivery. Twenty women of the 120 underwent cesarean delivery. In all cases but one, cesarean delivery was not anticipated. Mother's Previous Baby Care Experience. This scale is made up of the sum of scores on two variables: (a) how much experience the woman had had taking care of infants under six weeks of a g e - c o d e d 1 (none), 2 (some experience), 3 (full charge); and (b) the woman's confidence in her ability to care-for a newborn b a b y - c o d e d from 1 (not at all confident) to 4 (very confident). The alpha reliability of this scale is .46. Father's Previous Baby Care Experience. This scale was formed by adding responses from two questions: (a) "Have you been around newborn babies very much?" Answers were coded 1, none; 2, a little; 3, a lot. (b) "How much do you know about how to care for a newborn?" Answers were coded 1, nothing; 2, not much; 3, some; 4, a lot; 5, all. The alpha reliability of this scale is .54. Husband's Involvement in Child Care, Estimated by Wife. The variable is measured for women (INV-H) by asking how many times the husband had changed the baby's diapers on the day before the interview (the actual number is the score); how long the husband had held the baby in the previous 24 hours, rated from not at all (scored 0) up to 4 hours or more (scored 6); whether the husband had ever given the baby a bath, scored 0 for no,

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1 for helped with, and 2 for bathed on own; when the husband showed interest in the baby (scored on a continuum from 0 to 4); how often the husband had fed the baby in the preceding 24 hours (number of feedings is the score). For the middle-class women the alpha reliability is .54; for working-class women it is .71. Husband's Involvement in Child Care, Estimated by Self. Men rated themselves on the first three of the activities listed above for the women (diapering, holding, bathing), which were scored in the same manner. For the middle-class men the alpha reliability of this indicator is .69; for workingclass men it is .53. There is some agreement between middle-class spouses on the degree of the husband's involvement in child care (r = .47, p < .01), and less but still significant agreement between working-class spouses (r = .31, p < .05).

THE MODEL

To explain the spouses' ratings of paternal competence and to account for change in those ratings over the period of a couple's first birth, we adpated a structural equation model developed by Reilly (1981; see Fig. 1.) The model takes father's role competence after the birth as dependent upon earlier expectations for this competence, circumstances of birth, previous child care experience, the infant's adjustment, and the husband's participation in child care. An abbreviated rationale for the model follows. 1. The father's perception of his own role competence after the birth is assumed related to the perception he held before the birth. If the man ex-

Husband'sParticipation in theBirth ~ aternalRole ~ Evaluatlon- Prepartum

U1 /

Infant'sAdjustment Fig. I. Model of development of parental role evaluation from prenatal period through first few weeks after birth, A.C.: There are covariances among al! of the exogenous constructs.

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pected to be competent (or the reverse), this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mother's perception of the father's competence after the birth is likewise assumed to relate to her earlier perceptions before the birth. If women expected husbands to be competent, they could take actions that would cause this to happen. The woman might offer to teach the husband how to bathe the baby, for instance. 2. Whether or not the father participated in the birth could affect ratings of the father because a man who participated in the birth of his child may evaluate himself as a father more favorably on that account. His wife would be expected to rate him more favorably on that account as well. 3. Delivery mode could affect both parents. Positive effects of cesarean delivery on father's parenting are known to occur later in the first year of a child's life (Pedersen, Zaslow, Cain, & Anderson, 1981; Vietze, MacTurk, McCarthy, Klein, & Yarrow, 1980). This suggests that father-infant relations might be better for cesarean fathers in the early postpartum too. If so, both parents might rate the father higher if the birth was cesarean. 4. Parents' previous child care experience could affect ratings of paternal competence of fathers because men with more experience might actually be more competent (Crawford, 1983; Steffensmeier, 1982). Both parents could rate the father as more competent on this account. Alternatively, mothers with more previous experience could rate husbands higher (they will know better how to help the father become competent) o r lower (experienced mothers may set higher standards for child care). 5. The parent's perception of the infant would be expected to have some effects on ratings of parental competence. Children who are intense, negative, and withdrawing place more difficult demands on parents than children who are more adaptable (Thomas & Chess, 1977). A "difficult" child could depress both spouses' ratings of the father as a parent because the child is harder to soothe. 6. The husband's involvement in child care in this sample was discretionary. All men in this sample held full-time jobs. Since their involvement was voluntary, fathers who invested more time in child care might see themselves more favorably. Wives might also view husbands more favorably if they participated in child care. On the other hand, the women might be threatened if their husbands were heavily involved because they could view child care as primarily their responsibility. For the large majority of women in this sample motherhood supplanted a full-time paid job, and resigning from the work force could arouse anxieties about self-worth. One way to defend against this anxiety would be for women to monopolize parenting activities.

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RESULTS This section is organized as follows: We first examine changes in fathers' own judgments of their role competence from before the birth to after, and then try to account for that change using the model shown in Fig. 1. Data used for this purpose were obtained directly from fathers. Second, we examine change in wives' judgments of their husbands role competence from before the birth to after, and then try to account for change in wives' perceptions of their husbands as fathers, again using the model in Fig. 1. Data used for this purpose were obtained directly from mothers. To repeat: the model in Fig. 1 is a single-equation model, estimated first to explain changes in men's views o f themselves as fathers and then estimated a second time to explain wives' views of the men as fathers. The model used here closely follows a structural equation model that examined change in women's perception of their own role competence as mothers (Reilly et al., 1987). The earlier work suggested that we estimate the present model separately for fathers of the two social classes using ordinary least squres (OLS) and assuming no measurement error. 3 The model is designed to shed light on whether men's views of themselves as fathers and their wives' views of them as fathers change over the period of the birth event, and if so, which factors could account for that change. By estimating the model separately for the two spouses, one can see whether role perceptions are based on the same set of considerations.

Average Ratings of Fathers by Men and Women Middle-class men's ratings of themselves as fathers dropped significantly from before the birth to after ( - 1.96 units). Their wives' ratings of them also dropped ( - 1.23 units). Yet at both times wives rated husbands significantly higher than husbands rated themselves.

3When LISREL (Joreskog& Sorbom, 1978) was used to estimate a structural equation model of maternal role effectiveness for women in this sample, the maximum likelihood estimates of parameters were close to estimates of the same model using ordinary least squares and assuming perfect measurement (Entwisle, 1982; Reilly, 1981). Estimates of a "stacked" model (LISREL IV) for the women when the sample was divided by social class revealed structural differences in the model's fit across the two classes. The model fit well accordingto chi-square tests of goodness of fit when estimated separately for each social-classgroup but the fit was significantly reduced when data were pooled. Accordingly,in estimating a similar model to explain men'srole competenceas fathers, we estimated the model usingthe less expensiveOLS procedure rather than LISREL, and estimated it separately by social-class groups.

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Working-class men's ratings of themselves as fathers also dropped, but not significantly (-0.93 units). Their wives' ratings of them did drop significantly ( - 1.02 units), however. Like the middle-class women, at both times the working-class women rated their husbands higher than husbands rated themselves. The changes in ratings are presumed to be explained by the model in Fig. 1. With ratings before and after the birth event, other variables in the model, if significant, identify putative explanations for such change. As discussed later, the model explains a substantial amount of variance in both men's and women's ratings.

Change in Men's Ratings of Self as Father Middle-class men's relative ratings of self as father persisted strongly from before the birth to after (standardized coefficients of .567; see Table III). Although the men saw themselves afterward as less competent fathers than they expected to be (their ratings dropped), nevertheless those who expected to be more competent beforehand saw themselves as relatively more competent afterward. The only other predictor in the model linked to change in the middle-class fathers' ratings was their perception of the infant. If the man had a more positive perception of the infant, this led to positive change in his ratings of himselves as a father (standardized coefficient of .416). Effects of the man's child care involvement or of other predictor variables are neither substantial nor significant. Change in the middle-class father's role perception was thus governed mainly by his perception of the infant. The picture is different for the working-class men. Their relative ratings did not persist from before the birth to after (standardized coefficient of .229, not significant). Their ratings of themselves as fathers after the birth were not very consistent with their ratings of themselves before the birth. And, unlike the middle-class fathers, the working-class fathers' ratings of themselves did not respond to their perceptions of their infants' adjustment. Their ratings did depend on the degree of their child care involvement (standardized coefficient of.535), and participation in the birth had a borderline negative effect on their perceptions of themselves as fathers. Having participated actively in the birth, contrary to our predictions, depressed rather than enhanced the working-class men's self-ratings. Overall, the model accounts quite well for changes in men's ratings for both middle-class and working-class fathers. The variance in postnatal ratings explained by this model is 63 and 48°70 for the two groups, respectively. In addition, the model reveals that for men of the two social classes rather different factors prompted change in self-ratings. Perhaps because of the relatively small sample sizes, only the difference linked to husband's involve-

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ment in child care is large enough to be significant across the two classes (t = 2.66, p < .01) when differences in size of regression parameters are tested across social-class groups. Note, however, that the sign of the relationship differs across class for three other predictors (previous experience, husband participation in birth, and delivery mode).

Changes in Women's Ratings o f Husband as Father A parallel model, when estimated with variables based on information secured directly from the women, was used to account for change in women's ratings of their husbands as fathers. Middle-class women's relative ratings of their husbands as fathers persisted strongly (standardized coefficient of .553) despite the uniform drop in their mean ratings. In these respects, patterns of women's ratings paralleled patterns in their husbands' ratings. Women's ratings after the birth were less favorable than they were before but middle-class women were consistent in their ratings of the husbands at the two times. However, the middle-class women's ratings, unlike their husbands, did not respond to perception of the infant. Rather, their ratings depended on the two activities of the fathers that support them as mothers-husband's participation in delivery and the women's perceptions of the husbands' involvement in child care (standardized coefficients of .383 and .219, respectively). In addition, cesarean delivery contributed to more positive change in perception of husbands as fathers for the middle-class women (standardized coefficient of .301). Middle-class husbands and wives thus agreed that fathers were less competent as parents than either spouse anticipated (average ratings of the father fell for both spouses from before the birth to after), but they disagreed in terms of the criteria they drew upon to explain change in the ratings. Working-class women's ratings of their husbands as fathers differed from those of their husbands in that their relative ratings tended to persist (standardized coefficient of .465). But change in working-class women's ratings of their husbands can be explained in the same terms as change in their husbands' ratings of themselves, namely, according to husband's involvement in child care (standardized coefficient of .237). If a working-class husband participated relatively more in child care, then his wife's perception of him as a father tended to be more favorable. Thus apparently both working-class spouses tended to use the same criterion in rating men as fathers, even though ratings by wives dropped significantly and ratings by husbands did not. Overall, the model accounts quite well for changes in ratings of both middle-class and working-class women. The model explains 52 and 38~/0 of the variance, respectively. In addition, the model reveals that women of the

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two classes used rather similar criteria in making their ratings. All the parameters are consistent in sign for the two groups of women except for cesarean delivery. To sum up: there was a tendency for ratings of men as fathers to decrease from before the birth to after, irrespective of who was making the ratings. The explanations for decreases in ratings are not the same for the two middle-class spouses, but are the same for the two-working class spouses.

DISCUSSION The model used here closely follows one used earlier to explain change in women's role performance (Reilly et al., 1987). Here it also accounts rather well for change in parents' view of role competence. Its usefulness in accounting for change in perception of father's competence as a parent from before the birth of a couple's first child to afterward is borne out in that (1) it explains considerable variance in each of four applications, and (2) each explanatory variable posited by the model is significant in at least one application except for previous baby care experience. However, the range of previous baby care experience in this sample was quite limited, so the potential importance of this variable should not be underrated. Because parents' experience has proved important in other studies (Crawford, 1983), we believe this variable should remain in the model in future applications despite its unimpressive contribution here. The low correlations between parents' views of infant adjustment indicate almost no agreement between spouses in their perceptions of the infant. One explanation for this may be in the differential exposure of the two parents to the infant, with fathers having far less exposure than mothers. Fathers were absent a large part of the day and many did not get up at night with the baby. Only four mothers had returned to outside employment by two months postpartum, and in the vast majority of cases the women were with the infant virtually 24 hours a day. Another factor contributing to lack of agreement could be that mothers and fathers were questioned at different times after the birth, fathers being questioned 2 to 3 weeks later than mothers. Fortunately, the lack of agreement between spouses does not cause problems in interpretation of class or spouse differences because only the middle-class fathers took infant temperament into account in rating paternal role performance. New parents are generally ill-prepared to take up the task of full-time infant care (Hubert, 1974; LeMasters, 1957) and have overoptimistic expectations (Belsky, 1985). It is not surprising, therefore, that both spouses rated fathers lower after the birth than they had before. The men in this sample

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did lack previous experience with newborns, with 80% acknowledging little or no experience with babies under six weeks of age. Also these men had unrealistic ideas about their wives' capabilities. When questioned before the birth, 70% thought their wives knew "all" or "a lot" about infant care, whereas 57% of the women acknowledged no experience at all in caring for a child under six weeks of age. The decrease in fathers' perception of their own role effectiveness lines up well with research showing a drop in mothers' perceptions of their own role effectiveness over the same period (Reilly et al., 1987). The women in this sample also showed a sharp drop in their views of their maternal competence from before the birth to afteL Apparently both spouses found the parenting role more demanding than they had anticipated. Both husbands and wives rated themselves as less competent parents in the early postpartum period than they expected to be. The criteria the middle-class spouses used for judging fathers are surprisingly different. The middle-class fathers apparently felt that a fussy baby reflected on their own parenting capabilities. Their wives, on the other hand, did not see the men as having responsibility in this domain. This finding is consistent with another study of how a first birth affects fathers' personalities, in which new fathers' perceptions of their infants also predicted their sense of efficacy (Sirignano & Lochman, 1985). The social class of these fathers is not mentioned specifically, but other information given about the sample makes it seems likely they would compare well with our group of middle-class fathers. The middle-class fathers' sensitivity to the infant and the working-class fathers' lack of it can be interpreted in terms of role stereotyping. If workingclass fathers have traditional and narrow views of the father role, they would expect to be breadwinners and to leave the babies mainly to their wives. The infants' happiness would then be largely irrelevant to their role performance. Middle-class fathers, on the other hand, would see the baby's emotional state as relevant if they were adopting a less instrumental and more expressive role toward the infant. At the time when our sample of fathers was studied, the "mystique surrounding parturition created by the medical profession" (Nash, 1976, p. 80) was just beginning to break down. With changes in attitudes toward men's roles, particularly those aspects concerned with legitimizing nurturant and expressive components of those roles, the social climate was becoming more accepting of fathers who participated actively in the period of early infancy. Such change, however, would be expected to affect middleclass men sooner than working-class men, as observed here. These middle-class fathers were probably role innovators in a sense. Other evidence of role innovativeness according to social class in this sample is that a majority (59%) of the middle-class fathers believed new fathers

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would like to hold and touch their babies right away, whereas 77% of the working-class fathers believed men would rather wait (X~ = 3.63, p = .055). Both groups of women generallly did not evaluate the father in terms of infant characteristics, perhaps indicating role distancing of the father by them because of their need for "replacement" jobs as they resigned from the labor force. Other information about these parents is consistent with the idea that wives were generally inclined to distance husbands from babies. For example, wives' previous baby care experience was negatively correlated with the father's enjoyment of parenthood (r = 0.42)p < .01; Entwisle & Doering, 1981). The women's need for gaining or maintaining power within the family, in fact, might be strong enough to submerge class differences in women's role definitions of fathers. Although the middle-class women took several factors into account (including delivery mode) in rating fathers, their view of the husband's role performance was just as dependent on husband's child care as was the working-class women's. Both groups of women defined the husband's responsibility for the baby in terms of carrying out tasks that helped them. They apparently reserved responsibility for the baby's adjustment as a task for themselves (see Reilly et al., 1987). How does this model increase understanding of class differences in the transition to parenthood? First, role theory holds that parental roles are more stereotyped for working-class than for middle-class people. On this basis we would expect greater agreement between working-class parents than between middle-class parents on the criteria used in rating paternal competence. This is exactly what we see. Working-class men and women both based their judgments of the father's role competence mainly on his involvement in child care. The middle-class men and women, though, disagreed on the criteria they used in rating the fathers' effectiveness. The middle-class men considered only their perceptions of the infants' adjustment, while their wives considered the husbands' participation in the birth, delivery mode, and the men's child care activities. That the middle-class wives used more varied criteria than the workingclass wives and used different criteria from their husbands is also consistent with other findings for this sample. Earlier we found that the middle-class father, unlike the working-class father, did not follow his wife's lead in parenting activities (Entwisle & Doering, 1981). The middle-class men appeared to use their own experience as a resource to direct their early fathering behaviors, while the working-class men appeared to turn to their wives for models of parenting behaviors. Another way that role stereotyping might be revealed is in speed of taking up the new role. As noted earlier, if the parent role is not stereotyped, then new parents need time to fashion a role. The stability in both middleclass parents' ratings of the fathers from before the birth to after could indi-

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cate that these fathers were slow in making the transition to p a r e n t h o o d they were keeping their old role until they had time to fashion a new one. They could not jump into a new role as soon as the infant appeared, because they did not know the constituents of the role. Along similar lines, the lack of persistence in working-class fathers' ratings of themselves from before the birth to after could indicate that they did move quickly into their new roles. Against this line of thought, however, is that the working-class wives' view of their husbands did persist. Whether working-class men assumed the parent role more quickly than the middle-class men is thus not entirely clear from these data, and further research is needed on this issue. No data bear directly on whether fathers who fill their parental roles more completely generate greater rewards for their spouses, but that mothers in both social-class groups rated fathers significantly higher than the fathers rated themselves could mean that mothers were generally being rewarded by fathers. Those who fill their roles more competently may also be "more competent" in other ways, however. There is a correlation between division of household labor during pregnancy and the extent of husband's care of the new b a b y - men who helped more around the house during pregnancy tended to be those who diapered and held the baby more often later on (Entwisle & Doering, 1981, p. 240).

Cesarean Delivery Although not a major concern of this paper, we should note that there is little information available concerning how cesarean delivery affects husbands in the early postpartum (Entwisle, 1986). A number of papers show positive effects of cesarean deliver~, on father-infant relations later in the baby's first year, however (Pedersen et al., 1981; Vietze et al., 1980). The higher ratings of father's role competence in the first few weeks after delivery, by middle-class mothers who had delivered by cesarean, observed here, could explain the superior father-infant relations in cesarean families observed later in the first year by other research, especially since those studies focused exclusively on middle-class families. The woman who had delivered by cesarean, rating the father higher in the early weeks, probably rewards and encourages his fatherly behavior. Middle-class fathers' views of themselves are also positively affected by cesearean delivery, although the effect is not large enough to be significant. Over time spouses' positive view of fathers whose wives had delivered by cesearean could encourage the kind of behaviors that would produce the superior father-infant relations observed by other researchers.

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Other Issues

Two factors limit the generalizability of the findings reported in this paper. The first is the small sample size. Although this sample is relatively large compared to other samples used for researching similar issues, it is small by most standards. The second is the limitation in the range of the socialclass variable. These working-class couples were relatively well off. There may be other social-class differences that would emerge in a large and more varied sample. The use of verbal reports to measure the father's child care activity is not a serious drawback because spouses' perceptions of child care activity rather than activity p e r se may be the key factor in spousal ratings. Fatherhood is a key component of the male role. In the last two decades, there has been considerable blurring of men's sex roles, which could have some substantial consequences for parenting. Not much is yet known about how men develop conceptions of themselves in the father role, or about how other family members come to regard men as fathers. The analysis in this paper shows that average amounts of child care activity did not differ by social class, but there are strong indications that fathering behavior has different roots in the two social groups. For working-class families the nature of the father's role may be much less problematic. More research is needed on these issues, however.

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Stayton, D., Hogan, R., & Ainsworth, M. Infant obedience and mental behavior: The origins of socialization reconsidered. Child Development, 1971, 42, 1052-1069. Steffensmeier, R. A role model of the transition to parenthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1982, 44, 319-334. Stern, D., Beebe, B., Jaffee, J., & Bennett, S. The infant's stimulus world during social interaction: A study of caregiver behaviors with particular reference to repetition and timing. In H. Schaffer (ed.), Studies in Mother-Infant Interaction. London: Academic, 1977. Thomas, A., & Chess, S. Temperament and development. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1977. Vietze, P., MacTurk, R., McCarthy, M., Klein, R., & Yarrow, L. Impact of mode of delivery on father- and mother-infant interaction. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Infant Studies. New Haven, CT, April 1980. Yarrow, L., Rubenstein, J., & Pedersen, F. Infant and environment. New York: Wiley, 1975.