Understanding Maternal Gatekeeping: How Mothers Help and Hinder Father Involvement

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Introduction

tree11Research on fatherhood reveals a wide range of factors that support or hinder fathers’ positive engagement with their children. In fact, father involvement has been shown to be influenced, to a greater extent than mother involvement, by contextual factors, such as family dynamics or socio-economic situation (Doherty et al, 1996). One such factor is the child’s mother. Mothers play a critical role in how fathers are involved with their children, whether they live together or not. Mothers can facilitate or hinder the father’s involvement, often serving as gatekeepers between fathers and children.

What is maternal gatekeeping?

“Gatekeeping” is the term used to describe the mother’s beliefs and behaviours, particularly encouragement or criticism, which act as a gate to open or close the door to father involvement.

Gatekeeping is not always bad. It can occur to protect the safety of the child, for example. But it may also happen for reasons unrelated to the child, such as to punish a father after a break-up. The latter, which exemplifies negative gatekeeping, tends to ignore the importance of the father as it relates to the child’s best interests.

Gatekeeping may be deliberate or unconscious. For example, a mother may think she is helping the father by instructing him on how to care for the child or by creating a list of things for him to do, when in fact, this action may lessen father involvement over time (MFFN, 2009).

Gatekeeping can occur in all family types, even when a marital relationship is present and strong. For example, 26% of married Singaporean fathers cited resistance or a lack of encouragement from their child’s mother as a challenge to parenting, providing some evidence of maternal gatekeeping (MCYS, 2009).

Studies show that many mothers, whether married to the father or not, have mixed feelings about fathers’ active involvement with their children (Baruch & Barnett, 1986; Cowan & Cowan, 1987, as cited in Doherty et al, 1996).

It is worth noting, however, that gatekeeping by the mother of any other family member does not diminish the father’s responsibility to participate in the child’s upbringing, or to initiate participation. In fact, fathers may implicitly or explicitly support maternal gatekeeping behaviours (MFFN, 2009).

Why care about maternal gatekeeping?

Maternal gatekeeping is an important issue for two key reasons:

  • Maternal gatekeeping could get in the way of co-parenting or parental alliance – the coordination between parents in their parental roles (Carneiro et al, 2006). And, parents’ ability to co-parent, despite disagreements, misunderstandings or differences in parenting that can arise, predicts a wide range of child outcomes. These include children who have positive lessons and role models about relationships and cooperation (Lindsey et al, 2006), and who display positive social behaviour (Garber, 2004). These benefits do not even factor in the numerous gains for children when their fathers are involved in their lives, regardless of the type of family form.
  • Of various factors affecting fathering, mothers’ attitudes, behaviours, and support, are among the most important.

The following outlines just how influential mothers are, in helping and hindering fathering.

In two-parent / intact families…

  • Marsiglio (1991, as cited in Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1996) found that mothers’ characteristics were more strongly correlated with fathers’ involvement than fathers’ own characteristics were.
  • For example, mothers’ beliefs are stronger predictors of father involvement than the beliefs of fathers themselves, though the latter are important too. Maternal encouragement is a significant predictor of father involvement. Maternal criticism has a smaller effect, though it still constrains father involvement (Schoppe-Sullivan et al, 2008)
  • Even within satisfactory marital relationships, fathers’ involvement with their children, especially young children, often depends on the mother’s attitudes towards, expectations of, and support for the father, as well as on the extent of her involvement in paid work (De Luccie, 1995; Simons, Whitbeck, Congar, & Melby, 1990, as cited in Doherty et al, 1996).
  • 77% of Singaporean fathers cite their child’s mother as their source of support or influence in performing their parental roles, a higher proportion than for any other factor (MCYS, 2009).

In separated/divorced families…

  • A wide body of research has pointed to the strain in co-parenting and increase in negative maternal gatekeeping in separated / divorced families. For example, in the Singaporean study cited above, 74% of fathers separated/divorced from their child’s mother (vs 26% of married fathers) cited resistance or a lack of encouragement from their child’s mother as a challenge to parenting. Even so, 63% of this group agreed the child’s mother functioned as a source of support to their parenting role, less than the figure for married fathers (MCYS, 2009).
  • Support from the former spouse with fathers’ own parenting performance is a strong predictor of co-parental interaction in raising the child (Madden-Derdich & Leonard, 2000).
  • Mothers also have a role to play in co-creating functioning post-separation relationships with their child’s father. A positive relationship between the non-resident biological father and mother is associated with a greater likelihood that the father will remain involved (Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1998).
Implications

Mothers may engage in gatekeeping behaviour for various reasons. Key ones include (Allen & Hawkins, 1999; Fagan & Barnett, 2003):

  • A belief in the appropriateness of differentiated family roles, i.e., that the family domain is a woman’s role
  • The need for validation of their mothering identity
  • A pessimistic assessment of fathers’ competence in child care, or
  • The adoption of particularly high standards for child care.

Practitioners working with families and seeking to engage fathers in children’s lives may thus need to consider an additional dimension of working with mothers, in order to fully engage fathers. Such consideration may include challenging the mother’s assumptions about her own role and that of the father, and helping both parents to understand their joint contributions to the father’s role in the day-to-day care of their child.

Works Cited:
  1. Allen, S. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (1999). Maternal gatekeeping: Mothers’ beliefs and behaviors that inhibit greater father involvement in family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 199–212.
  2. Carneiro, C, Corboz-Warnery, A., & Fivaz-Depeursinge, E. (2006). The prenatal Lausanne trilogue play: A new observational assessment tool of the prenatal co-parenting alliance. Infant Mental Health Journal, 27, 207-228.
  3. Coley, R.L., & Chase-Lansdale, P.L. (1998). Adolescent pregnancy and parenthood: Recent evidence and future directions.American Psychologist, 53, 152–166.
  4. Doherty, W. J., Kouneski, E. F., & Erickson, M. F. (1998). Responsible fathering: An overview and conceptual framework.Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 277-292.
  5. Fagan, J., & Barnett, M. (2003). The relationship between maternal gatekeeping, paternal competence, mothers’ attitudes about the father role, and father involvement. Journal of Family Issues, 24, 1020–1043.
  6. Garber, B. D. (2004). Direct co-parenting intervention: Conduct childcentered interventions in parallel with highly conflicted co-parents. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 35, 55-64.
  7. Johnsen, J. & Masiarchin, P. (2010). Minnesota Social Services Association Annual Training Conference, March 2010, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
  8. Li, M. (2009). A model parent group for enhancing aggressive children’s social competence in Taiwan. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 59(3), 407-419.
  9. Lindsey, E. W., Colwell, M. J., Frabutt, J. M., MacKinnon-Lewis, C, & Manusov, V. (2006). Family conflict in divorced and non-divorced families: Potential consequences for boys’ friendship status and friendship quality. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 45-63.
  10. Madden-Derdich, D. & Leonard, S. (2000). Parental role identity and fathers’ involvement in coparental interaction after divorce: fathers’ perspectives. Family Relations, 49(3), 1741-3729.
  11. Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (2009). Fatherhood Public Perceptions Survey.
  12. Minnesota Fathers and Families Network (MFFN) (2009). Infosheet 17: Gatekeeping: Mom as a pathway to healthy father involvement.
  13. Schoppe-Sullivan, S. J., Brown, G. L., Cannon, E. A., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & Szewczyk Sokolowski, M. (2008). Maternal gatekeeping, coparenting quality, and fathering behavior in families with infants. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 389-398.

About the Author: The Dads for Life Resource Team comprises local content writers and experts, including psychologists, counsellors, educators and social service professionals, dedicated to developing useful resources for dads.

First published on 21-05-2012.