Role Of Fathers Essay

The role of fathers has changed over time, from only being considered as financial support, through being the breadwinners of the household, to spending more leisure time at home with family and becoming a caregiver. Both the mother and father in a household have vital influences on children growing up, through the loving supportive environment they create in their household. This essay will discuss the ways in which fathers influence children directly, indirectly and through a multidimensional contribution.

Father’s roles are a constantly changing concept, the way that father’s interact with children has developed as the idea of the breadwinner in the family is less necessary, through the way that society has developed so that mothers are

People are moving away from the typical nuclear family model, where both mother and father are married and live together, and towards many varying situations that suit the family. Examples of these types of situations are ‘cohabiting fathers,’ these are fathers that live with the mother but are not married to the mother. This situation tends to be single mothers that live with another adult, this type of person creates a father figure in the child’s life. Another example are ‘non-residential biological fathers,’ this may be that the father lives away from the home because of a divorce, or perhaps they were never married. A stereotype of these fathers is that they fail to meet their financial obligations, but recent studies shows that that’s not necessarily true, but that they are financially supporting the child in more informal ways. Finally, the last example are ‘social fathers,’ these father’s tend to be considered as ‘father figures’ these fathers could be a romantic partner of the mother’s, a relative, or even as they reach school a coach, or teacher. These father’s tend to be a replacement for a biological father that has no involvement, however the uncertainty of social fathers can lead to discontinuity of the relationship, or

The National Institute of Child Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD) use this model to offer the idea of reading and math success as well as socioemotional competence, through considering the support of the material status and the “maternal and paternal psychological functioning” and how it affects children. A study from the NICHD SEYCCD produced two sets of findings of children transitioning to school in a situation where the father lived with the family, investigating the direct and indirect influences of the fathers on the transitioning children. The first study of 648 families demonstrated the findings that children from age 4 and a half to children aged 7-8 years old had fathers that were more sensitive and more autonomous than the mother-child relationship. Teachers also reported that children with parents that had an intimate marriage had less internalising problems, as well as the teachers were rating the child’s socio adjustment to be higher when the father reported higher marital support. The second set of longitudinal research presented findings from age 4 and a half to 8-9 year olds, observing the sensitive support of mothers and fathers towards children’s autonomy. Children’s self-reliance, teacher-child