The past days fathers had taken responsibilities of representing and the bread earner for their families and mothers had taken care of household affairs and nurturing children, but today according to increasing of working women, divorcing rate, reduci...
The past days fathers had taken responsibilities of representing and the bread earner for their families and mothers had taken care of household affairs and nurturing children, but today according to increasing of working women, divorcing rate, reducing family size, fathers have charged themselves with caring children as well as mothers. That is, fathers have times with their infants and they interact with them by physical caring and playing more than before. That time they give them stimulants of different types from mothers. Many foreign researchers have reported that these different types of parenting stimulate childrens growth and development, so fathers also have been recognized important caregivers.
All this while most fathers in Korea socially and culturally have learned about traditional parenting, but they are changing their fathering styles to meet the demands of the times.
The purposes of this study were to ascertain patterns of play interaction between first-time fathers and their infants under the playing situations and understand relations and effects on factors, and then contribute to nursing implementation for supporting first-time fathers.
This study was designed to explain the correlations of variables. Data were collected for 2 months by video-taping from 29 first-timed fathers and infants(6-11 weeks old) in their houses.
In this study the main concepts were play interaction, role confidence, and related factors were relationship to parents, wifes support, marital adjustment, babys character, and fathers age.
For measuring fathers and infants behaviors, Father-Infant Play Interaction Scale that was applied to father instead of mother as a caregiver was used. In pilot study this scale was a good for ascertaining patterns of father-infant play interaction and that time the reliability was 0.95, this time was 0.9231. And the rest were 0.6331∼0.8594.
The analysis of data was done with SPSSWIN for descriptive statistics and t-test, chi-square, Correlation Analysis, ANOVA, multiple Regression Analysis.
The results were as follows :
The fathers play interaction with their infants showed the ordinary reciprocity(sum 55.10, SD 11.98). Fathers(mean 4.03) vocalized well in response to infants behavior or used mimicry and posed rhythmic holding so that allowed self-directed movement to infants(mean 3.76). But over-all dyadic of interaction, they(mean 2.07) showed frequent delay between initiation of interaction and subsequent response from infants. Also in synchrony of affect, fathers(mean 2.79) interfered to seek a pleasurable exchange due to infants distress.
Fathers role confidence affected by wifes emotional and physical support(β=0.58, t=3.08, P=0.01), so fathers can easily acquire their role attainment if wives encourage her partners fathering behavior.
Fathers were influenced by relation to their parents(β=0.37, t=2.34, P=0.03), but they wanted to perform fathers role with different types from their fathers. Fathers age also had an effect on his role attainment(β=0.36, t=2.55, P=0.02).
Fathers role confidence did not affect reciprocity of play interaction, but maintain relationship(r=0.34, P=0.03).
Wifes support was also connected with play interaction between first-timed father and infant(r=0.38, P=0.02).
As a result the hypothetical model proved explanatory power from fathers age, relationship to parents, role confidence to role attainment but didnt show effect from role confidence to play interaction.
Besides, fathers and infants showed that delayed interaction and interchange of affect under the playing situations and also fathers represented the difficulties of sensing infants state in a measuring confidence of infant caring. this meant fathers had no knowledge about infants state.
In a hospital nurses have to teach first-time fathers about infants growth and development and afford opportunities to handle their babies before discharge. Moreover nurses have to encourage wives to support their husbands both emotional and physical aspects. And then they will have good relations with their infants. So nurses can contribute to maintain and promote parents and infants health.
Based on the result of this study, the following recommendations are made:
1. Due to explain the effect from role confidence to play interaction, repeat study is needed with many first-time fathers and variables.
2. A longitudinal study is required to prove the process of fathers role attainment.
3. A comparative study is requested to understand the process for mothers and fathers role attainment.