Over the past 30 years, there has been a surge of interest in understanding the experiences and outcomes of expectant and parenting foster youth. Despite the importance of understanding this unique population of foster youth, there remains a lack of research on fathers in foster care. Most studies of expectant and parenting foster youth focus on mothers in care, and studies that have examined fathers in care provide little insight compared to what we know about mothers. Furthermore, existing research on fathers in foster care is limited by underreporting, service engagement issues, lack of meaningful engagement data, and very little information on fathers’ involvement with their children. There is very little published research on the experience of fatherhood in foster care or on related outcomes for fathers in care such as residency with children, father engagement with children, coparental relationship quality, or the health and well-being of their children. While there have been over 60 studies and three reviews on expectant and parenting foster youth spanning roughly 30 years, the articles have primarily focused on empirical findings relating to mothers in foster care. Information on fathers in foster care has received little attention and is restricted to empirical studies. This scoping review aims to fill this gap by examining the available information on fathers in foster care. To this end, our scoping review explores empirical findings and knowledge from practice-, legal-, and policy-related literature related to fathers in foster care from peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, dissertations, white papers, and grey literature published between 1989 and 2021. Findings from 94 sources of evidence on expectant and parenting foster youth suggest that mothers in foster care are consistently the focus of the literature. If fathers in foster care are included in the literature, findings or guidance are often provided in the aggregate (e.g., parents in care). However, when aggregated, literature still focuses on mothers in care, or female pronouns are used to describe the larger expectant or parenting foster youth population. Many of the studies excluded fathers, and the primary exclusion rationale includes a lack of identified fathers in care, unreliable child welfare data on fathers, or high attrition of fathers in parenting services. In terms of information on fathers in foster care by the source of evidence, research papers often provided quantitative descriptions of fathers, practice papers focused on rights of fathers, legal papers centered on paternity establishment or paternal rights, and policy papers largely discussed the need for improved data tracking and interventions for fathers. More research is needed to support fathers in foster care as they transition out of care into early adulthood and young fatherhood.

在过去的 30 年中，人们对了解预期和养育青少年的经历和结果的兴趣激增。尽管了解这一独特的寄养青年群体很重要，但仍然缺乏对寄养父亲的研究。大多数关于期待和养育寄养青少年的研究都集中在受照料的母亲身上，与我们对母亲的了解相比，对受照料父亲的研究几乎没有提供任何洞察力。此外，现有关于寄养父亲的研究受到报告不足、服务参与问题、缺乏有意义的参与数据以及关于父亲与孩子参与的信息很少的限制。关于父亲在寄养中的经历或父亲在照顾中的相关结果（例如与孩子一起居住）的已发表研究很少，父亲与孩子的互动、共同父母关系的质量，或孩子的健康和福祉。虽然在大约 30 年的时间里，已有 60 多项研究和 3 篇关于寄养青少年的研究和评论，但这些文章主要关注与寄养母亲有关的实证研究结果。关于寄养父亲的信息很少受到关注，并且仅限于实证研究。该范围审查旨在通过检查有关寄养父亲的可用信息来填补这一空白。为此，我们的范围审查从 1989 年之间发表的同行评审期刊文章、报告、论文、白皮书和灰色文献中探索了与寄养父亲相关的实践、法律和政策相关文献的实证结果和知识和 2021 年。来自 94 个关于寄养青少年的证据来源的调查结果表明，寄养中的母亲一直是文献的焦点。如果文献中包含寄养父亲，则通常以汇总的形式提供调查结果或指导（例如，寄养父母）。然而，综合起来，文献仍然集中在照顾中的母亲，或者女性代词被用来描述更大的预期或育儿寄养青年人口。许多研究排除了父亲，主要排除理由包括缺乏确定的父亲在照顾，父亲的儿童福利数据不可靠，或父亲在育儿服务中的高流失率。从证据来源来看，关于寄养父亲的信息，研究论文通常提供对父亲的定量描述，实践文件侧重于父亲的权利，法律文件侧重于父权确立或父亲权利，政策文件主要讨论了改进数据跟踪和父亲干预措施的必要性。需要更多的研究来支持寄养的父亲，因为他们从照料中过渡到成年早期和年轻的父亲。