IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/cysrev/v89y2018icp132-144.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Child welfare workers' sexism and beliefs about father involvement

Author

Listed:
  • Brewsaugh, Katrina
  • Masyn, Katherine E.
  • Salloum, Alison

Abstract

Research over the last few decades has consistently found that fathers are not routinely included in the provision of child welfare services. The current study examined whether ambivalent sexism on the part of child welfare workers was related to their beliefs about involving fathers. Ambivalent sexism theory posits that gender stereotypes include subjectively positive beliefs in addition to hostile beliefs that both serve to perpetuate patriarchal systems. Participants (N = 490) were currently front-line child welfare workers in the United States who completed an online survey assessing ambivalent sexism and beliefs about father involvement in child welfare cases. Ambivalent sexism was assessed using the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory and the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory. The Dakota Father Friendly Assessment was modified to assess beliefs about father involvement in child welfare. Latent class analysis was used to empirically derive four sexism profiles. Results indicated that participants with profiles suggesting less sexist beliefs had more positive attitudes about father involvement and had a lower preference for working solely with mothers. Sexism profile was not related to participants' stated father involvement behaviors such as conducting home visits when fathers are present, including fathers in case planning discussions, and recruiting fathers or paternal relatives as placement options. Implications for social work and child welfare practice include developing training that increases knowledge of fathers' importance and increases workers' comfort in providing services to men.

Suggested Citation

  • Brewsaugh, Katrina & Masyn, Katherine E. & Salloum, Alison, 2018. "Child welfare workers' sexism and beliefs about father involvement," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 132-144.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:89:y:2018:i:c:p:132-144
    DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.04.029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740917310022
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.04.029?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coakley, Tanya M., 2013. "The influence of father involvement on child welfare permanency outcomes: A secondary data analysis," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 174-182.
    2. Vermunt, Jeroen K., 2010. "Latent Class Modeling with Covariates: Two Improved Three-Step Approaches," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 450-469.
    3. Malm, Karin E. & Zielewski, Erica H., 2009. "Nonresident father support and reunification outcomes for children in foster care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 1010-1018, September.
    4. Bolck, Annabel & Croon, Marcel & Hagenaars, Jacques, 2004. "Estimating Latent Structure Models with Categorical Variables: One-Step Versus Three-Step Estimators," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 3-27, January.
    5. Strega, Susan & Fleet, Claire & Brown, Leslie & Dominelli, Lena & Callahan, Marilyn & Walmsley, Christopher, 2008. "Connecting father absence and mother blame in child welfare policies and practice," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 705-716, July.
    6. Brewsaugh, Katrina & Strozier, Anne, 2016. "Fathers in child welfare: What do social work textbooks teach our students?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 34-41.
    7. Lazar, Amnon & Sagi, Abraham & Fraser, Mark W., 1991. "Involving fathers in social services," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 287-300.
    8. Crawford, Brandon & Bradley, Mindy S., 2016. "Parent gender and child removal in physical abuse and neglect cases," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 224-230.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vered Ben David, 2021. "Associations between Parental Mental Health and Child Maltreatment: The Importance of Family Characteristics," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-13, May.
    2. Burcher, Sarah A. & Corey, Liz A. & Mentzer, Kari McClure & Davis, Laurel & McNamee, Hannah & Horning, Melissa L. & Brown, Sarah Jane & Shlafer, Rebecca J., 2021. "Family home visiting and fathers: A scoping review," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    3. Francine de Montigny & Christine Gervais & Danaë Larivière‐Bastien & Diane Dubeau, 2020. "Assessing the impacts of an interdisciplinary programme supporting father involvement on professionals’ practices with fathers: A qualitative study," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5-6), pages 1003-1016, March.
    4. Gonzalez, Juan Carlos & Flores, Iliana & Tremblay, Madeleine & Barnett, Miya L., 2022. "Lay health workers engaging Latino fathers: A qualitative study," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brewsaugh, Katrina & Strozier, Anne, 2016. "Fathers in child welfare: What do social work textbooks teach our students?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 34-41.
    2. Jennifer Oser & Marc Hooghe & Zsuzsa Bakk & Roberto Mari, 2023. "Changing citizenship norms among adolescents, 1999-2009-2016: A two-step latent class approach with measurement equivalence testing," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 4915-4933, October.
    3. Aely Park & Youngmi Kim & Jennifer Murphy, 2023. "Adverse Childhood Experiences and Substance Use Among Korean College Students: Different by Gender?," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(4), pages 1811-1825, August.
    4. Bakk, Zsuzsa & Kuha, Jouni, 2020. "Relating latent class membership to external variables: an overview," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107564, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Gugerty, Mary Kay & Mitchell, George E. & Santamarina, Francisco J., 2021. "Discourses of evaluation: Institutional logics and organizational practices among international development agencies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    6. D'Andrade, Amy C., 2017. "Does fathers' involvement in services affect mothers' likelihood of reunification with children placed in foster care?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 5-9.
    7. Yajing Zhu & Fiona Steele & Irini Moustaki, 2020. "A multilevel structural equation model for the interrelationships between multiple latent dimensions of childhood socio‐economic circumstances, partnership transitions and mid‐life health," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(3), pages 1029-1050, June.
    8. Jason V. Chen & Kurt H. Gee & Jed J. Neilson, 2021. "Disclosure Prominence and the Quality of Non‐GAAP Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 163-213, March.
    9. Seohee Park & Seongeun Kim & Ji Hoon Ryoo, 2020. "Latent Class Regression Utilizing Fuzzy Clusterwise Generalized Structured Component Analysis," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-16, November.
    10. Kim, Hyun Ju & Chung, Jae Young, 2020. "Factors affecting youth citizenship in accordance with socioeconomic background," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Qianru Liang & Jimmy de la Torre & Nancy Law, 2023. "Latent Transition Cognitive Diagnosis Model With Covariates: A Three-Step Approach," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 48(6), pages 690-718, December.
    12. Aurélie Bertrand & Christian Hafner, 2014. "On heterogeneous latent class models with applications to the analysis of rating scores," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 307-330, February.
    13. Tobias A. Bauer & Alexandro Folster & Tina Braun & Timo von Oertzen, 2021. "A Group Comparison Test under Uncertain Group Membership," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 86(4), pages 920-937, December.
    14. Milani, Luca & Grumi, Serena & Camisasca, Elena & Miragoli, Sarah & Traficante, Daniela & Di Blasio, Paola, 2020. "Familial risk and protective factors affecting CPS professionals’ child removal decision: A decision tree analysis study," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    15. Bartolucci, Francesco & Montanari, Giorgio E. & Pandolfi, Silvia, 2015. "Three-step estimation of latent Markov models with covariates," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 287-301.
    16. Durante, Daniele & Canale, Antonio & Rigon, Tommaso, 2019. "A nested expectation–maximization algorithm for latent class models with covariates," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 97-103.
    17. Margot Bennink & Marcel A. Croon & Brigitte Kroon & Jeroen K. Vermunt, 2016. "Micro–macro multilevel latent class models with multiple discrete individual-level variables," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 10(2), pages 139-154, June.
    18. Sarstedt, Marko & Radomir, Lăcrămioara & Moisescu, Ovidiu Ioan & Ringle, Christian M., 2022. "Latent class analysis in PLS-SEM: A review and recommendations for future applications," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 398-407.
    19. Zhu, Yajing & Steele, Fiona & Moustaki, Irini, 2020. "A multilevel structural equation model for the interrelationships between multiple latent dimensions of childhood socio‐economic circumstances, partnership transitions and mid‐life health," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103104, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Mitchell George E., 2024. "Three Models of US State-Level Charity Regulation," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-25, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:89:y:2018:i:c:p:132-144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.