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Abstract
Black men living in the rural southern United States are faced with a variety of contextual stressors, including disproportionate rates of poverty, racial discrimination, and residing in communities with few educational and employment opportunities. Nonetheless, emerging data suggests that many of these men are highly motivated to be involved in their children’s lives and surmount these barriers to maintain positive engagement with infants and young children. However, the specific contextual circumstances that promote positive fathering among rural, Black men, as well as the unique impact of fathers’ parenting for early child development in this cultural context are not well-understood. Thus, the proposed dissertation leverages two datasets to examine developmental pathways from fathers’ parenting to early socio-emotional development among rural, Black children. In Study 1, we examined the longitudinal impact of prenatal readiness for parenting among expectant Black fathers on their children’s socioemotional adjustment (18 months of age) through several dimensions of paternal engagement in an ongoing study of unmarried, Black fathers living in rural poverty. In study 2, we investigated the association between paternal sensitivity (6 months of age) and child executive functioning (35 months of age) through children’s cortisol reactivity (24 months of age) among a sub-sample of rural, Black father-child dyads from the Family Life Project (FLP). These studies were collectively intended to elucidate paternal contributions to early socio-emotional functioning among an overlooked and understudied population of parents. Implications for both research and practice with rural, Black children and families are discussed.