A study was made to assess whether middle-class men who were primary caregivers for their preschool-age children continued as such when their children were of school age. The attempt was made to predict level of paternal involvement 4 years later; also explored were the stability and predictors of father involvement over a 4-year period when the men initially had no major childrearing role. The sample consisted of 59 middle class, primarily white, intact families with preschoolers of age 3 to 5 in 1977. Results indicated that a number of factors influenced the father's role in the socialization process, but that these factors differed in importance in the context of different family structures. Specifically, influential factors included the father's efforts to compensate for or model his own father's role in child care, the nature of father interactions with the child, the sex of the child, and the father's education and occupation. Also influential, but to a lesser extent, were the mother's education and sex-role orientation, and the father's age. It appeared that high father involvement was a stable and enduring pattern: upon assessment when their children were 7 to 9 years of age, men who took a major role in child care early on were not found to have retreated into a traditional, uninvolved paternal role. (RH)