Fathers are an important aspect in a child’s life much like mothers are. Every father wants to be a good father to their child. They always want to have strong bonding and relationship with their child. Being a parent is always a matter of constant learning and comes with a lot of challenges and experiences.
An active role by the father plays an important role in a child’s development. The knowledge and participation as they share with professionals who are part of their child daily life come in handy later.
In this article, we will focus on the importance of a father on the child’s development, the father’s role in parenting and the various benefits of a father’s involvement.
What Are The Fathering Techniques:
The Clinical and developmental psychologist, Diana Baumrind has outlined three main parenting styles (R) as per his experience:
- Authoritarian – it focuses mainly on the parenting style that is low on warmth and high on the control in nature.
- Authoritative – it focuses mainly on the love and limits, where it’s medium on control and high on warmth in nature. The Discussions can be had, but the parent remains in control as of it.
- Permissive parenting – focuses on very high on warmth were as low on control. People who use this style view as it the most child-centered process of parenting.
Importance of Father in Child Development:
There is no particular right or wrong in the amount of time that a father should spend with their child. Children get benefits from the quality interaction they share with each other. Fathers involved in their child’s development really make a difference. It really affects the mental health and well being of a child. The importance and benefits of a father’s involvement in a child’s life include:
- Fathers give children a person to trust, to bond with and feel secure around himself.
- The fathers do have different opportunity to give their parenting style in a different way from another family member.
- The boys who are more connected to their father really develop more self-confidence and self-control, whereas the girls learn to be stronger with their feelings.
- The research has also proved that good father-child relationships in early childhood are also associated with good father-child relationships in adolescence period also.
- When the father is more involved in child development then the child is more likely to get on well with their siblings.
- The father’s role in parenting helps the children to have better social skills and they are more able to have positive relationships with other children and are likely to behave less aggressively than those whose fathers don’t involve in the parenting process of their kids.
- The father role in parenting always leads to building a strong relationship during childhood and later phase of life. The father-child bond even lasts into the child ‘s adulthood.
Benefits of Father Involvement:
The following are some positive effects of father involvement in the early years of a child.
1. Children’s Mental Health:
Father involvement in parenting is a positive linked with children’s overall life satisfaction and well being in their life. The Babies whose fathers are involved in their daycare are more likely to feel connected to them than mothers. They are better able to handle new and unfamiliar situations, can manage stressful situations in all dimension, and are more curious and eager to explore the environment at glance. A child with connected fathers or parenting are also more likely to experience:
- higher levels of happiness
- higher levels of confidence
- Fewer feelings of fear and guiltless emotional distress and upset.
2. Children’s Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills:
Children who are involved in conversations that include the question which has opportunities to practice and hearing more complex words and sentences from others. These skills help the child to find ways to solve problems and develop their own word and language skills than those children who don’t have healthy parenting. These are often the sort of conversations that children have with their fathers and helps children to develop better problem-solving skills.
3. Children’s Social and Emotional Development:
From birth, the children who have an involved role of father (R) are more likely to feel emotionally connected with each other, confident to explore their surroundings, and have a better social connection with their others siblings. When fathers are more involved in experiences with their children, such as eating meals together and going on outings, this has a positive influence on children’s social development. Children with connected fathers are likely to:
- Have positive peer relationships
- Have stronger and closer friendships with less conflict
- Experience the real sense of giving and take relationships
- To develop turn-taking skills with other children too.
4. The Mother Father Relationship:
It goes without saying that fathers who play an active role in raising their child lighten a load off their partner’s shoulder. Women who get emotionally supported by their husbands feel better, they do have better pregnancies, breastfeeding experiences, and have better postpartum mental health than those of not. These good feelings continue as the babies grow into children. When the fathers are very involved, encouraging, and supportive, then the mothers tend to be more positive, sensitive, and responsive to their kids. All of these traits in a mother make it more likely for kids to be happy and secure, underlining the importance of supportive fathers role in child development.
How to Become a More Involved Father?
Children come across or feel a father’s love when he spends some quality time with them. According to a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are three main reasons that the time a father spends with his children is critically important and effective in proper child development
First- spending time together which enables a father to get to know by each other and to be known by his child. A father can be the best example of discovering his child’s virtues and vices, hopes, fears, and aspirations level and ideals by spending lots of time with his child.
Second, a father who spends lots of time with his child tends to be better at caring and parenting. Time spent together makes a father more sensitive to his child’s who needs more love, attention, direction, and discipline. And third most the children who often do see time as an indicator of a parent’s love for them.
The following suggestions will help you to become a more involved father:
- Have fun: fathers are uniquely suited to bond with their children by engaging them in some activity like play and fun-filled activities. This sorts of interactions help the children to learn the skill of navigating the world around them and understand compassion, empathy, that gain control over their impulses, among other benefits.
- Don’t stop as children get older: The Fathers should maintain the playful style of fathering as their children age as well. In other words, when it comes to father-child fun, the active pursuits like tossing the football, playing basketball, are more valuable things like than spending time in passive activities such as watching television and so on for their relationship with each other and for their child’s emotional , socially well being, social development, and physical fitness of their child.
- Be productive: It’s very important for children to do certain kind of productive tasks with their fathers such as cleaning up the house, doing laundry, or working in the garden. These types of common and shared activities in children lead to a sense of responsibility and self-esteem among themselves. And in the long phase of life, it helps in engaging in helpful activities with dad. This can help the kids succeed in school and future life.
- Teach them. When fathers are involved in their children’s educational activities, the children are more likely to succeed academically than those who do not. This engagement can take a number of forms, right from reading with children to helping with their homework or attending parent-teacher meetings in school. This is one area in which a father’s involvement has even more significant impact than a mother’s for kids.
Small things matter a lot for kids. These above techniques and skills will definitively help you to build a stronger relationship between you and your child. The importance of father involvement in child development is tedious. So, the father should play a better parenting style in a child’s life.
