The Role of Gatekeeping in Non-Resident Fathers’ Contact with Their Children: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Views

Abstract

We present two studies addressing maternal gatekeeping in separated families and investigate its association with interparental relationship problems and with father-child contact. The first study included 187 custodial mothers and 160 non-resident or shared parenting fathers. The findings suggest that there are significant links between both parents having a negative view of the other and the father having infrequent contact with his children. Coparenting conflict was found to be associated with both parents being worried about the well-being of their children, but only the fathers’ reports of conflict and child-related worries were shown to be linked to low levels of contact, which suggests that paternal withdrawal rather than protective maternal gatekeeping affects levels of father-child contact. The second study (pairfam) used longitudinal data from 145 mothers on the father’s child support payment history, levels of coparenting conflict and cooperation, and the frequency of father-child contact; and from their children on levels of maternal restrictive gatekeeping. Children’s reports of being pressured to side with their mother were shown to predict less frequent contact with their father one year later, even when controlling for earlier contact. Unexpectedly, fathers who did not provide child support were found to have high levels of contact. Overall, we conclude that the role of gatekeeping seems to be limited.