Protective and Risk Factors Associated with Involved Fatherhood: Implications for Policy and Practice

Introduction: Several theoretical models delineated to understand the processes that explain the antecedents of fatherhood involvement. Consistent with ecological systems theory and heuristic model of parental behaviors dynamics, the current study focused on both individual and contextual factors that determine the fatherhood involvement in the context of a traditional patriarchal culture. This study considered several different components as the determinants of fatherhood involvement: gender-role attitudes, patriarchal values, and values attributed to children as the cultural history factors; father age, paternal education, socio-economic status, and father role satisfaction, as the father characteristics; maternal education and employment status as the mother characteristics; child gender and number of children as the child characteristics; perceived support from different sources (the family, spouse, and friends), marital satisfaction, time spent outside the home (at work and with friends), and whether the fathers used legal paternal leave as the contextual factors. The macro social and cultural conditions of the society were not measured directly in the current study. Nevertheless, the reflections of these macro conditions on the individual level for paternal attitudes and behaviors were considered.

Method: Data were collected from a representative sample of fathers of preschoolers in Turkey (N=1070). Congruent with the father involvement dimensions that include fathers’ level of engagement, accessibility, and responsibility, we used these different components of fatherhood involvement to project three distinct paternal behavior dimensions: care, affection, and control. The corresponding fathering behaviors were measured using the Inventory of Father Involvement (Hawkins et al., 2002), Child Rearing Questionnaire (Sanson, 1994), and Alabama Parenting Questionnaire-9 (Elgar et al., 2007). Multilevel regression analyses were performed in predicting fathering behaviors.

Results: Results showed that father role satisfaction, psychological value attributed to the child, and perceived family support were significantly associated with involved fatherhood and higher warmth and praise. Higher life satisfaction was associated with higher praise. Working hours per day were negatively associated with involved fatherhood, as expected. Patriarchal views of masculinity have been found to be the main predictor of punishment, controlling for all other predictors in the model.

Conclusions: The current study sought to extend our understanding about the factors contributing to involved fatherhood by focusing on three dimensions as care, control, and affection in the context of a traditional patriarchal culture. We will discuss how the findings have potential implications for the understanding of meanings attributed to fatherhood that emerge within a cultural context and for policy and practice fostering positive fathering.