The Father's Role: An Examination of the Impact of Fathers on Problem Behaviour in Childhood and Adolescence

Abstract

Previous research shows that parental childcare involvement influences children's behavioural outcomes, but much of this research is focused on the mother-child dyad or on 'parents' more broadly. There is a call for further rigorous and methodologically advanced research that focuses on the father's role in the child's upbringing and the impact this might have on child development and behaviour. This thesis explores how the quantity and quality of the father's involvement in childcare, his risky behaviour and separation from the family are associated with the child's problem behaviour across the early years of childhood and in adolescence. To achieve this, the thesis runs Structural Equation Models (SEMs) on quantitative data and interprets the results through the lens of three sociological theories - social learning theory, social control theory and attachment theory. The SEM analysis is applied to six sweeps of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a representative panel survey of children born in Great Britain in 2000-02. The main findings are as follows: - The amount and quality of the father's involvement are negatively associated with adolescent problem behaviour. This finding aligns with social control theory that suggests that parent-child bonds serve as a protective factor against the child's criminal/delinquent behaviour. - The analysis does not find evidence that the father's risky behaviour, independently from the mother's risky behaviour and a set of covariates, predicts adolescent risky behaviour, and thus does not lend support to social learning theory which suggests that risky behaviour is learnt by children from their parents. - The father's separation from the family is associated with a long-lasting increase in child conduct problems, with separation during the early years of a child's life having the most detrimental effect. This aligns with attachment theory which suggests that the disruption to early parent-child attachment is likely to result in negative socio-emotional outcomes for children. The findings highlight the importance of the father's carer role that has positive effects on the child's behaviour that are independent from the effects of the mother's care and involvement.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Mark Elliot (Supervisor)