| Paternal involvement is a description of father's accessibility to, engagement with, and responsibility for one or more children (Lamb, 2000). While paternal involvement is likely to be influenced by cultural factors, more research is needed to understand these relationships for Latino fathers. Family oriented elements of the Latino culture, including familismo, respeto, and educacion, suggest that paternal involvement is culturally valued, and that some masculine gender norms, caballerismo, have a positive influence on father involvement. Other aspects of Latino masculine gender norms, macho behavior, may have a negative influence. Furthermore, ethnic identity and acculturation status inform the cultural context for fathering, thus they provide important information about how both the majority and culture of origin influence fathering. The purpose of the present study was to explore how machismo, acculturation, and ethnic identity relate to paternal involvement for Latino fathers. Seventy Latino fathers of various immigration and socioeconomic statuses completed self-report surveys, which were then analyzed using hierarchical linear regression. Multivariate analyses offer a contextualized view of these variables, and suggest that macho behavior has a strong negative relationship with paternal involvement when controlling for other cultural and gender variables. |
