Most research about parenting focuses on the role of the mother, but how important is a father’s involvement in their children’s development? A study published in Social Science and Medicine suggests that though greater involvement of the father was associated with positive child development, it can be difficult to engage fathers in rural Kenyan communities to be more involved.
Childhood is crucial to each person’s development, and parenting and home environment can be hugely important factors. Though the majority of households do have a father present, parenting research and intervention strategies have focused almost exclusively on mothers.
In low- and middle-income countries in particular, the gap between which parent provides more care widens. In high-income countries, the father’s role has increased steadily over the past few decades, which can provide many positive outcomes for children by aiding their development. This study aims to understand how father involvement functions in low-income countries.
Study author Italo Lopez Garcia and colleagues utilized data from 1,070 mothers and 635 fathers across 60 villages in rural Kenya from an intervention on responsive parenting implemented in 2018 and 2019. Due to high rates of migration, fathers were allowed to be interviewed by phone or at a different time than mothers, who were the first point of contact.
Both fathers and mothers completed measures asking about the father’s involvement with the child and household. Mothers completed measures on maternal wellbeing, including depression and stress. Maternal behaviors were measured by self-report and observation. Child development outcomes were also assessed. Lastly, demographic data was collected.
Results showed that the parenting intervention did not significantly impact father-reported involvement. Additionally, only about half of fathers attended even one session and fathers who did attend participated in the ‘father’s only’ group, rather than the ones including their wives and children. Fathers who did attend sessions also had higher engagement with their children and more support to the child’s mother, but it did not have an association with joint decision making.
The father’s support to the mother (such as praising them or helping with household chores) was associated with improvements in child development and improvements in the mother’s mental health. The majority of the positive effects for the children stemming from the father’s support of the mother can be explained by the positive effects it has for the mother, who tends to have a higher degree of involvement.
“Specifically, we find that greater father interpersonal support offered to the mother and greater participation in shared household decision-making are associated with small but significant improvements in children’s development,” the researchers said.
Though this study took strides into better understanding father involvement’s effects on children in low-income areas, it also has its limitations. One such limitation is that due to the nature of correlational data, causation cannot be assumed, and reverse causation cannot be ruled out. Additionally, the sample had a limited number of involved fathers, which makes it difficult to say if that group was accurately represented.
“Overall, our results suggest that fathers matter for family and child wellbeing in [low- and middle-income] settings, and parenting interventions that successfully engage fathers in positive intrahousehold interactions could result in improvements in parental behaviors and child development beyond what interventions that focus only on mother-child dyads may achieve,” the researchers concluded. “Future research in [early childhood development] programming would greatly benefit from testing such interventions in similar low-resource settings to gain a deeper understanding of the causal impact of fathers in children’s lives.”
The study, “Father involvement and early child development in a low-resource setting“, was authored by Italo Lopez Garcia, Lia C. H. Fernald, Frances E. Aboud, Ronald Otieno, Edith Alu, and Jill E. Luoto.