Fathers’ Influence on Their Children’s Cognitive and Emotional Development: From Toddlers to Pre-K Natasha J. Cabrera University of Maryland Jacqueline D. Shannon Brooklyn College, CUNY Catherine Tamis-LeMonda New York University We present findings based on several of our recent studies that have shown that father engagement has significant effects on children’s cognition and language at 24 and 36 months and their social and emotional development at 24, 36 months, and pre-Kindergarten. These studies are guided by the Dynamics of Paternal Influences on Children over the Life Course Model that stipulates the important contribution of parent characteristics, child and context to parenting and chil- dren’s outcomes. Specifically, three research questions are addressed: (1) How do resident fathers engage with their young children at 24, 36, and 64 months (pre-K)? (2) How do fathers’ human and financial resources and depressive symptoms, partner relationship quality and mother–child interactions, and chil- dren’s characteristics predict the quality of fathers’ engagements with their young children? And (3) how do fathers’ engagements affect their young children’s cog- nitive, language, and social and emotional outcomes across the three age groups? Educated fathers and fathers whose partners have supportive relationships with their children are more supportive and less intrusive. In contrast to mothers, fathers’ supportiveness matters for children’s language, cognitive, and language development across ages and emotional regulation at 24 months. On the other hand, maternal intrusiveness is negatively associated with emotional regulation at 24 and pre-K and language development at pre-K. Father intrusiveness had a small negative effect on language development only at pre-K and no effect at all on social emotional regulation. These findings suggest that programs that aim at increasing fathers’ education and that promote and encourage fathers’ positive parenting will yield large benefits for children. In recent years, scholarship on resident low-income fathers has made important contributions to our understanding of how fathers affect children’s development. It has shown that men are involved with their young children in multiple ways through their accessibility, responsibility, and engagement; the quality of father engagement, or father–child interactions, can be positive and supportive; posi- tive father–child interactions matter for children’s development, with different effects emerging at different points in development (Cabrera, Ryan, Shannon, Brooks-Gunn, Vogel, Raikes, Tamis-LeMonda, & Cohen, 2004; Lamb, 2004; Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, & Cabrera, 2006; Tamis-LeMonda & Cabrera, 2002); and, that father–child interactions are embedded in a larger ecology that includes mother-father relationship and the family human and financial resources (Lamb, 2004). This article presents an integration of findings across several of our recent studies that have contributed to each of these areas. First, we present findings that address the question of how resident fathers are engaged with their young children at 2 years, 3 years, and pre- kindergarten (pre-K). These findings are impor- tant because they are based on observed rather than survey data and show that the quality of father–child interactions is consistent across time Correspondence should be addressed to Natasha Cabrera, University of Maryland, 3304 Benjamin Bldg., Room 3304 N, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: ncabrera@umd.edu Applied Development Science 2007, Vol. 11, No. 4, 208–213 Copyright # 2007 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 208