Father Involvement with Children in Absence and Presence of Mothers in Drawing Activity: An Exploratory Study

Tamkeen Saleem, Seema Gul, Shemaila Saleem

Abstract

The role of parents, especially father has been considered very important for children’s grooming, development and learning. Father warmth refers to the degree in which fathers display involvements, responsiveness and support to the child. Father involvement is associated with positive child outcomes in different aspects of life. But to some extent it has attained inadequate consideration and attention in the psychological research investigations. The aim of this research is to explore the father involvement with their children. The study also aimed at finding how much father involvement is shown by the fathers towards their children in presence as well as absence of the mothers of their children. The behavior of children was also observed in the two sessions to study how children react to father involvement in absence and presence of mothers. To carry out this experiment, two 45 minutes observation sessions were made on a single day; one at the first half of school in morning and one at second half of the school in afternoon. Repeated measures were taken for three different weeks. From the results a number of father involvement behaviors and their frequencies were observed. The results show that fathers showed more involvement with the children in the absence of the mothers as compared to the session where mothers were also present to assist the children in completing their drawing tasks. The results show that children were more eager to complete the task, competitive, talkative and sharing, in the first session (absence of mothers). The findings also reveal that children were somewhat more demanding, questioning and emotionally expressive in the second session (presence of mothers). Overall the children were obedient, happy and enjoyed their task in both the sessions. It is concluded that father involvement did increase in the absence of the mothers. The findings also reveal that the children were more eager to complete the task, competitive, talkative and sharing, in the first session (absence of mothers).