Does fathers involvement increase or decrease as children grow older?
Fathers’ involvement in their children’s schools, like mothers’ involvement, decreases as children grow older. The decline is due, in part, to schools offering fewer opportunities for parental involvement as children grow older. The pattern of decline, however, is not the same for mothers and fathers. The proportion of children with mothers who are highly involved in their schools declines steadily as the grade level of the children increases whether the children live in two-parent or in single-mother families. However, the proportion of children who have highly involved fathers does not decline steadily. In two-parent families, the proportion of children with highly involved fathers drops from 30 percent to 25 percent between elementary (grades K-5) and middle school (grades 6-8), but then drops only slightly, to 23 percent, in high school (grades 9-12). Among children living in single-father families, there is no decrease in the proportion who have highly involved fathers between ele
