Father And Adolescent Relationships

The roles and responsibilities of parents are changing, introducing new beliefs and attitudes about the paternal role in the family. Fathers are spending increasingly more time with their children, and are more directly involved in parenting as compared to before (Cabrera, Tamis‐LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000). Psychosocial development is defined as the development of the personality, including the acquisition of social attitudes and skills, from infancy through maturity (Miller-Keane Encyclopedia, nd). Considering that fathers and mothers used to occupy different childcare domains, with vastly different gendered parenting styles (Cabrera et al., 2000), it may seem a challenge for fathers to provide their children the same quality

Adolescent children were asked to indicate their level of satisfaction with their paternal and maternal relationships and complete the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), which measured their frequency of depressive symptoms in the past week. Results showed that a higher level of satisfaction with father-adolescent relationships was associated with fewer depressive symptoms. In addition, the magnitude of the effects of the father-adolescent relationship did not significantly differ from that of the mother-adolescent relationship (Videon, 2005). It would seem that not only are fathers’ involvement in childcare important, they also have the ability to provide a quality of care comparable to

In the 20th century, fathers played an instrumental role as the breadwinner of the family, whereas mothers played an expressive role, promoting and maintaining the emotional well-being of family members. Hence, mothers had primary responsibility over their children’s psychological health (Videon, 2005). These gender roles may have been carried over to the present day, as mothers are still assuming responsibility over the bulk of child rearing activities. In a study examining the division of childcare activities in two parent families with children below 12 years of age, results revealed that mothers were the main providers of all four aspects of childcare tested (interactive, physical and emotional, travel and communication, passive), and the amount of time mothers spent on childcare was almost double the time as compared to fathers (Craig, 2006). Since the experience of providing childcare appears to differ greatly between fathers and mothers, where mothers appear to invest more time and effort into supporting various aspects of child development, it seems to reinforce that fathers are limited in quality of care they can provide due to gender roles.

However, there is a growing convergence in the types of activities and amount of time that both parents are spending with their children, whereby fathers are increasingly engaging in