Before the industrial revolution, which fractured the roles of parenting into provider and nurturer, the task of a father was straightforward. Providing financial support, coming home from work sober and occasionally stepping in as disciplinarian when mothers’ authority was exhausted defined the role. From the 1960’s and 70’s change in expectations escalated and now fathers are expected to be ‘Dads’. While research has primarily focused on mothers, it is clear that father involvement is associated with positive cognitive, emotional, and social outcomes for children yet there has been minimal focus on men’s experience post-partum and the social and relational conditions that help or hinder their new role.
What Impacts Father Involvement?
Factors which contribute to father involvement include maternal and paternal attitudes and internal characteristics which are shaped by interaction with the infant and co-parent. A new infant is synonymous with chaos and the father’s internal, relational and external experience are all impacted by the new level of disorder. Research has demonstrated the association between environmental, interpersonal, and internal chaos with parents’ capacity for high-quality parenting, yet less is understood about how father’s experiences in their child’s infancy translate to their role as father in toddlerhood.
Household Chaos, Couple Conflict and Father’s Depressive Symptoms
Murray-Perdue et al (2025) studied 202 families to understand the relationship between these variables in infancy to predict father involvement in toddlerhood. The expectation was that a father’s assessment of household chaos, destructiveness in the couple relationship and depressive symptoms would result in less involvement with the toddler.
The Results
While postpartum fathers reported higher levels of depression in relation to perceived household chaos this did not directly equate with direct care of the child over time. However, couple destructive conflict did correlate with mother’s report of father involvement but not fathers’ perception of their engagement with their toddler. This is an interesting difference, and it is hard to know if this reflects objective levels of care by fathers or a mother’s distress at her partner in their relationship colouring her view of his contribution.
What are the Implications for Practitioners?
While the results are not clear cut, they do alert practitioners to the need to address the wellbeing of all family members at the birth of a baby and not become overfocussed on the mother-child dyad to the exclusion of the father. Depression in either parent will contribute to difficulties in the couple relationship which in turn directly impact the wellbeing of the child and actual or perceived caregiving of the toddler. Attention should be paid to the couple relationship and the demands for transformation in this life phase presents. The traditional focus on mothers and babies perpetuates an old stereotype that infants are ‘women’s business’ which burdens mothers, excludes fathers and denies young children a potentially rich relationship with their father.
Murray-Perdue,S., Rayburn,S., Wang,L., Cummings,M., Braungart-Rieker,J. Conflict and Father Involvement: The Unique Role of Postpartum Destructiveness for Fathers’ Direct Care in Toddlerhood Family Process, 2025; 64:e70013 1 of 10 https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.70013
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