Paternity Leave-Taking and Father Engagement

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Petts, R.J. and Knoester, C. (2018), Paternity Leave-Taking and Father Engagement. J. Marriage Fam, 80: 1144-1162. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12494, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12494. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.Evidence suggests that paternity leave-taking is associated with higher levels of father involvement, but research has been limited in its focus on cross-sectional analyses and indicators of father involvement used. This study uses national longitudinal data to examine whether paternity leave-taking is associated with 2 indicators of father engagement when children are infants, whether paternity leave-taking is associated with trajectories of father engagement during the first few years of a child's life, and whether the relationships between paternity leave and father engagement are explained by fathering commitments and attitudes. The results suggest that longer periods of leave are associated with more frequent engagement in developmental tasks and caretaking when children are infants as well as during the first few years of children's lives. There is also evidence that father attitudes partially explain the relationships between length of paternity leave and father engagement