Being Fathered and Being a Father: Examination of Two Generation Father Involvement
Author(s):
Şenil Ünlü-Çetin (presenting / submitting) Refika Olgan
Conference:
ECER 2012
Format:
Paper

Session Information

ERG SES C 01, Inclusive Education

Parallel Paper Session

Time:
2012-09-17
13:30-15:00
Room:
FCEE - Aula 2.1
Chair:

Contribution

We, human beings are also social beings and family is the first and the basic social system that we are involved in right from birth. Children learn about social norms, rules, and roles about their cultures by interacting with their parents, siblings and other family members before engaging in more complex social structures (Berk,2006).  In this smallest but the basic social system, parents are the most important sources for their children. While the interaction and relationship between parents and children are very crucial for children’s development and their later life experiences, what is more crucial is that  these relationships  affect their own parenting styles and attitudes that they are going to display in the future when they become parents themselves (Beaton&Doherty,2007). There are many research that indicated the association between parents’ parenting behavior and their children’s future parenting behaviors. Yet, many of those research emphasized on the effect of mother child relationship on children’s future parenting behaviors while ignoring the fathers. However, Benson (1968) claimed that fathers are masculine role models for their children and both sons and daughters learn about masculinity, male gender roles particularly from their fathers. Benson (1968) also highlighted the fact that fathers importance for their sons is a bit different from its importance for female children, because through modeling sons not only learn about masculinity or gender roles but also they learn “how to be a father in another family” (Benson,1968, p.169 ). This is not a claim that is left in suspense. Today it is easy to find many support in the literature about the fact that paternal behaviors is influential on especially male children’s future parenting behavior (Ahlberg & Sandnabba,1998;Barnett&Baruch,1987;Blendis,1982;Daly,1993;Flouri&Buchanan,2002;Lewis,1984;Radin&Goldsmith,1983;Sagi,1982). In 1982, Sagi tested two hypotheses about the fathers’ effect on their sons’ fathering behavior. One of them claimed that some fathers modeled their own fathers’ high or low involvement while involving with their own children. The other hypotheses, on the other hand, claimed that males might “compensate for their fathers’ lack of involvement” and it was assumed that compensation would only occur if the fathers’ involvement level was low (Pleck,1997,p.80) and the results supported these two hypotheses. Although there are many studies that reveal similar results, father-child relationship is a highly cultural issue; therefore, these hypotheses need to be tested in different cultures, as well. The national literature of Turkey is not rich in terms of father-related research. Even there is not any study that investigates the association between experienced paternal behavior and future paternal behaviors, in Turkey. Thus, two main purposes of this study are (1) to explore the general pattern of Turkish fathers’ and their own fathers’ involvement level, (2) to investigate the possible effect of perceived own father involvement level on fathers own involvement level to their 0-8 year-old children’s lives.

Method

Participants of the study were 528 biological-resident fathers, who live in different districts of Ankara, the central city of Turkey. All of these fathers have at least one child who is between the ages of 0 and 8. A convenient sampling procedure was used and all participants were reached through familiar people and kindergarten/elementary schools who were contacted personally. Fatherhood Scale (Dick, 2004) and Inventory of Father Involvement (Hawkins et al., 2002) were used to gather data. Both of these scales were adapted to Turkish by the researcher. The adapted version of Fatherhood Scale (FS) includes 52 items with the Cronbach’s alpha level of .96. The second scale of the study was Inventory of Father Involvement (IFI) that was developed by Hawkins, Bradford, Palkovitz, Christiansen, Day and Call (2000). This scale was also adapted to Turkish by the researcher and this version of the scale has 25 items with a Cronbach’s alpha level of .86. Adapted versions of both Fatherhood Scale and Inventory of Father Involvement were 5 Likert-type scale. Factor analysis revealed 6 factors for FS and 6 factors for IFI, as well. Quantitative methodology was used in order to analyze the data through SPSS PASW program.

Expected Outcomes

Participants gathered the lowest score from the “Availability” sub-scale(M =3.52,S.D=0.85) whereas the highest score was gathered from the “Providing” sub-scale (M =4.80,S.D=0.54). Results of other sub-scales are as following;“Mother Support & Teaching”(M=4.31,S.D=0.71);“Monitoring&Planning” (M=3.95,S.D=1.14);“Disciplining”(M=3.90,S.D=0.83); and “Supporting Emotionality” (M=4.39,S.D=0.76). When fathers’ fathers’ involvement pattern is examined through fathers’ retrospective reports, it has been seen that there is a consistency between fathers’ and their son’s involvement to child related activities. According to the reports of participating fathers, fathers’ fathers mostly involved in activities related with “Providing” sub-scale(M=4.35,S.D=0.71) and the least involvement occurred in “Monitoring & Availability” sub-scale (M=2.33,S.D=0.95). Fathers’ reports indicated that their own fathers “sometimes” engaged in activities related to Communication & Affection (M=3.27,S.D=0.95), Negative Emotional Expressiveness (M=4.13,S.D=0.66), Teaching(M=3.28,S.D=1.08), and Religious Father(M =2.95,S.D=1.15) sub-scales. For the second research question, participants have divided into three groups; fathers who perceived their own fathers as highly involved, moderately involved and low involved. MANOVA analysis revealed that there is a significant difference between these three groups in terms of involvement to their children’s lives. That is, fathers who have highly involved fathers reported significantly higher involvement for Mother Support&Teaching and Availability sub-scales of IFI-Turkish form when compared to fathers’ who have moderately or low involved fathers.

References

Ahlberg, C. & Sandnabba, N. K. (1998). Parental nurturance and identification with own father and mother: The reproduction of nurturant parenting, Early Development and Parenting, 7, 211-221. Barnett, R. C., & Baruch, G. K. (1987). Determinants of fathers’ participation in family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 29-40. Benson, L. (1968). Fatherhood: A Sociological Percpective. New York, Randon House, Inc. Berk, E. L. (2006). Child Development and Psychology (7th ed.). Pearson/Allyn an Bacon. Blendis, J. (1982). Men’s experiences of their own fathers. In Beail, N. & McGuire, J. (Ed.) Fathers: Psychological perspectives (pp.197-216). Junction Books: London. Daly, K. (1993). Reshaping fatherhood: “Finding the Models”. Journal of Family Issues, 14 (4), 510-530. Dick, G. (2004). The fatherhood scale. Research on Social Work Practice, 14(2),80-92. Hawkins, A.J., Bradford,K.P., Palkovitz, R., Christiansen, S.L., Day, R.D., & Call, V.R.A. (2002). The inventory of father involvement: A pilot study of a new measure of father involvement. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 10(2), 183-196. Lewis, C. (1984). Men’s involvement in Fatherhood: Historical and gender issues. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the British Psychological Society, Lancaster, England, September,1984. (ERIC Document Reprod.Service No. Ed.261782). Pleck, J. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources and consequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed.,pp.66-104). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Radin, N. & Goldsmith, R. (1983). Predictors of father involvement in Childcare. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, April 21-24,1983, Detroit, MI.(ERIC number: Ed 248 031).

Author Information

Şenil Ünlü-Çetin (presenting / submitting)
METU
Elementary Education, Early childhood Education
Ankara
METU, Turkey

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