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Paternal involvement in child rearing tasks of pre-school children: an assessment

Author Affiliations

  • 1Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Home Science, MPUAT, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India
  • 2Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Home Science, MPUAT, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

Res. J. Family, Community and Consumer Sci., Volume 5, Issue (4), Pages 1-4, June,27 (2017)

Abstract

The world began to radically change with the social, economic and technical changes of the 21st Century and with those changes came a basic change in the structure and function of the family with a consequent shift in the authority of the father. At present, the socio-cultural changes have marked an increase in interest regarding fatherhood and the role of fathers in families. The present study was undertaken with an attempt to assess the level of father’s involvement in child rearing activities of their preschool children by using Paternal Involvement Inventory constructed by Singh (2007). The involvement was assessed under three major categories i.e. Grooming, Sustaining the learning and Future Orientation. The total sample consisted of 120 fathers residing in Udaipur city having children under the age group of 2-6 years as their eldest offspring. The results showed that fathers were highly involved in promoting health related tasks and physical skills and moderately involved in promoting emotional skills among preschool children. This indicates an improvement in paternal involvement as compared to the last few decades when the researches mainly focused on the maternal involvement in child rearing and mother-child relationships. From recent studies on Paternal Involvement it is evident that time spent with fathers is important for children throughout their early years. But, still the researches on parenting do not place much importance to the concept of fatherhood. Therefore, the present study is a small attempt to contribute in this particular area.

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