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Father’s Involvement and Health:What is the Connection?
Jessica Ball, MPH, PhD
School of Child and Youth Care
University of Victoria
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Does father’s involvement directly affect child health?
Fathering defined: more than paternity
Father involvement:
direct father-child interaction
e.g. care-giving, playing,
taking to dentist
What are direct impacts
on child health?
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Does father’s involvement indirectly affect child health?
Father’s contributions to child’s environment e.g. generating family income, relationship with child’s mother, housing, community interface
What are indirect impacts of father’s behaviour beyond the child on the child’s health? On father’s health?
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Is being involved as a father good for men’s health?
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What do we know?
‘Common knowledge’: it’s self-evident
Values-driven assumptions or biases:
“Fathers play essential roles
in children’s lives”
“Every child needs a father”
Little research based evidence
Why?
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It’s a mom’s world after all….
Mother- centrism: research, policies & programs focus on
maternal-child well-being
Burden of care for children falls more to women (traditionally & with increase in lone mother households)
Priority for investments (e.g., Maternal Child Health programs, Canadian Prenatal Nutrition and Pregnancy Outreach Program)
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Limitations of how we are looking at fathering
Problems with measuring ‘fathering’• Father absence: separation, divorce,
non-custodial• Father’s time spent with child: quantity vs quality• Direct involvement vs indirect contributions
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Focus of more research on development than on health.
But a health-based rationale for supporting father’s involvement is likely to attract more social investments.
How would we measure health outcomes separate from developmental outcomes?
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Focus of research on effects of
father absence rather than
effects of varying forms of
father presence
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Some evidence of positive effects of fathering on the father
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What other ways could we ask questions about father’s contributions to child & family health?
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Multiple impacts … Multi-generational implications
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To find out more…www.ecdip.org