WHEN A TEEN-AGE MOTHER has a baby, there's a father, too - often on the sidelines. Ted Futris is finding out what can help those young fathers become active participants in their children's lives.

"Children who grow up without their fathers are at higher risk for emotional, behavioral and academic problems," said Futris, assistant professor of human development and family science in the College of Human Ecology. "When their fathers are involved, they tend to be better off."

Little is known about how to encourage these fathers' involvement, Futris said. What is known isn't heartening: only about 20 percent of these fathers are married to the teen mother, and only two out of five legally establish paternity.

"We know about co-parenting relationships during marriage and following divorce and how that influences father involvement, but we don't know very much about how the co-parenting relationship influences young, never-married fathers."

To find out, Futris used a university seed grant to survey teen-age mothers involved in Ohio's GRADS (Graduation Reality and Dual Role Skills) program, which is designed to help teen-age mothers graduate from high school and become better parents. Preliminary findings from 104 of the mothers who responded provide a snapshot of what's going on in these young parents' lives.

Futris found that about half of the fathers usually provide child support, but one-third never do. About half of the fathers have regular contact with their child — at least twice a week — but about 30 percent never do. Futris found that the relationship between mother and father is critical.

"When cooperation (between parents) is high, we found a stark difference between our less-involved and our more-involved dads," he said.

Fathers are more involved when the mothers trust the fathers, have a positive attitude towards them, tend to believe fathers should be involved in a child's life, and report a high level of cooperation with the fathers, Futris said.

Importantly, Futris' study shows young fathers' involvement during pregnancy is critical to keeping them involved afterwards. In fact, 85 percent of fathers who maintain regular contact with their children and 91 percent who regularly provide financial support were present at the delivery of their child. In contrast, 83 percent of uninvolved fathers were not present at delivery, and 71 percent of those who do not provide any financial support failed to be at their child's birth.

Chris Boutwell, the GRADS teacher at Sentinel Career Center in Tiffin and surrounding schools, knows how important a father's involvement can be.

"If the fathers are involved emotionally with the children, then they're financially supportive, too," Boutwell said. Both are beneficial, but a father's involvement also relieves the mother's stress, which offers an indirect benefit for the children, as well, she said.

"When the fathers are involved, children have a male role model; they have another source of support. They just grow up to be more well-rounded," Boutwell said.

Futris is using findings to design programming aimed at helping young fathers stay involved in their children's lives by improving the co-parenting relationship.

"When they don't live together and they've never been married, it's very hard for a positive co-parenting relationship to establish itself," Futris said. "What I hope to do is to identify the key areas that we can target to strengthen that relationship."

Between 30 percent to 40 percent of fathers of children born to teen mothers are 19 or younger.

Chris Boutwell is the GRADS teacher at Sentinel Career Center in Tiffin; the graduation rate of teen mothers under her charge is 94 percent. Boutwell knows that in most cases, children are more well-rounded and well cared-for when their fathers remain involved in their lives.

Researcher Ted Futris has found key relationship characteristics between mothers and fathers that often determine whether young fathers remain in contact with their children and provide them financial support.