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Father Involvement and Male Depression 1
Running head: FATHER INVOLVEMENT, ADOLESCENT MALES, AND DEPRESSION
Father Involvement and Adolescent Male Depression:
A Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Males Living without Fathers
Gregory M. Sullivan
St. Michael’s College

Father Involvement and Male Depression 2
Abstract
Unlike studies that examine the positive emotional factors of father involvement in adolescent
males, this study examines how the lack of father involvement in adolescent males may relate
to the phenomenon of depression. The current study included 50 adolescent (ages 12-18) males
who were given the Beck Depression Inventory as a whole group, and then split up randomly to
form a control group of 25 boys and an experimental group of 25 boys. During the 3-month
experimental period, the experimental group was given a “father figure”. 25 male Graduate
students attending Yale University were expected to participate as the father figures in the study
as a graduation requirement. For 6 hours a day, 3 days a week, the boys in the experimental
group spent time with their father figure, while the control group had no father figure for the 3-
month experimental period. When the 3-month period concluded, the 50 adolescents were
administered the Beck Depression Inventory a second time. The results from the second BDI
indicated that the levels of depression significantly dropped for the experimental group when
compared to the scores of their first BDI. The depression levels of the control group had no
significant change as reflected by their BDI scores at test 1 and test 2. These data support the
idea that males who mature through adolescence without a father figure may be at greater risk
of depression.

Father Involvement and Male Depression 3
Father Involvement and Adolescent Male Depression:
A Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Males Living without Fathers
Much research has been done exploring how one’s family involvement protects against
unhappiness during adolescence. Hwang and Lamb (1997) found that even though father
involvement is less frequent in a family setting, father involvement makes a unique
contribution to offspring happiness in ways mother involvement does not. Similarly, in Flouri
and Buchanan’s 2002, it was found that father involvement contributed more significantly than
mother involvement to high levels of life satisfaction for adolescents. The same study showed
specifically that father involvement with adolescent males contributed more significantly to life
satisfaction than it did with adolescent females. In fact, when Flouri and Buchanan performed a
follow up experiment in 2003 testing the perceptions of parental involvement from the
adolescent’s point of view, it was found that adolescents reported father involvement to be
more significant than mother involvement when assessing their own happiness (Flouri &
Buchanan, 2003).