Research On Father Involvement In Child -Parenting

Father involvement has irreplaceable value for the healthy growth of children. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to parents involvement especially father involvement in child-parenting by all circles of the society. However, the phenomenon of "father absence" is still widespread in our daily life. Influenced by our traditional values and social economical structures, mothers are still the main caregivers of children in the majority of families. It would cause unfavorable influence on children that a serious lack of fathers’ involvement in children’s growth process. Therefore, it is quite necessary and valuable for analysis of factors affecting China’s father involvement in child-parenting and putting forward the improvement strategies that to know the overall situation of China’s fathers’participation in child-parenting.Based on the existing questionnaires of father involvement, according to suggestions of 6 educational experts/scholars, after 5 revisions, this study developed the draft of "questionnaire of father involvement in child rearing". Then according to the results of pre-survey, combined with advices of fathers investigated, the first draft was modified, and the formal questionnaire was formed ultimately. The formal questionnaire included 3 parts:basic information, the situation of fathers’ participation in child-parenting, and the ideas/suggestions. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in this study. The total number of the study samples was 1385, including 862 valid paper questionnaires did by fathers selected from 16 kindergartens/primary schools in 11 cities, and 523 valid online questionnaires did by fathers from 22 provinces. In addition, to collect more vivid and rich materials,3 fathers at different ages, holding different degrees, and being different occupations were selected as the objects of the depth conversation. Moreover,6 mothers in western area were selected randomly to have a brief talk with the researcher, which used as auxiliary materials of the research.The results showed that:(1) "children’s need" and "fathers’ responsibility" were the main reason of fathers to participate in child-parenting in the survey, and few fathers involved in nurture and education activities because of having experienced the joy of participation. (2) although there are nearly half of fathers said that basically they spent time with their children every day, the actual time with their children was not long. And mothers were the primary caregivers of children in most of families. (3) the overall performance of fathers investigated was not ideal, their mean scores were between "modest" and "good". The best part was involved in children’s education activities, the second was dealing with special events, and daily life care was relatively poor, and the worst part was to participate in company activities. (4) the majority of fathers were "democracy", "authoritative" fathers also accounted for a certain proportion, and the number of "cold" and "spoiled" fathers was relatively small. (5) there were four main plights of father s’ participation:one was that the economical pressure was so huge that they did not have time to company with their children, the second was lack of parenting guidance, the third that their education concept was not consistent to other family members sometimes, the last was that children were prefer to play with their peers rather than their fathers.Further analysis showed that:many factors such as personal characteristics (age, occupation, education level, etc) of fathers, children’s characteristics (age, only child or not), family factors (family structure, income, marital communication), social factors (residential area and its properties) and so on had significant effect on the quality of fathers’ participation. Therefore, from the macro control and micro analysis, the researcher thought we should explore countermeasures to improve Chinese fathers’ involvement in child-parenting through three dimensions, for example, rights and obligations of participation should be given to fathers, involved conditions should be ensured, and fathers’ participation abilities should be developed. Specific include:(1) to speed up the family education legislation, and to clear and definite the rights and obligations of father’s participation. (2) to guarantee the basic conditions of father involvement:one is that the mass media and government should take more efforts to promote and reshape the educational concepts of Chinese fathers. The second is the financial allocation and parenting education should work together to guarantee times of father involvement. (3) to enhance the capability of father involvement:one is the government should promote father involvement through economical and political methods. The second is public welfare organizations of father involvement should be established actively, and the way of parenting education should be innovated. The third is to give full play to community resources, and use infrastructure and human resources effectively. The forth is to strengthen and innovate the cooperation of kindergartens and higher education institutions. The fifth is to improve the communication mode between husband and wife, and to admire fathers’ ability of parenting. The last is to establish a learning society, and promote fathers to master the knowledge of the development of children and family education.