Connecting Fathers: Fathers’ Impact on Adult Children’s Social Networks
Published in The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 2022
Recommended citation: Soria C, Lawton L. Connecting Fathers: Fathers’ Impact on Adult Children’s Social Networks. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development. 2023;96(1):19-32. doi:10.1177/00914150221106645 hhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00914150221106645
We examine the relationship between having an emotionally close and active father in an adult child’s social network compared to having a father who is not close, or a father who was not named. We hypothesize that fathers provide both essential and important contributions to their children’s psychosocial development, and those contributions continue into active adulthood. Using the 2015 UC Berkeley Social Networks Study (UCNets), we find that adult children who name an emotionally close father in their network tend to have more males as social ties, but not more female ties. We conclude that fathers continue to play an important and active role in their children’s lives long after childhood.
Recommended citation: Soria C, Lawton L. Connecting Fathers: Fathers’ Impact on Adult Children’s Social Networks. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development. 2023;96(1):19-32. doi:10.1177/00914150221106645