You can avoid child behavior problems if you provide the due support your partner needs, a study reveals. University of Sussex's Rachel Latham presents her child behavior study's findings in the Annual Conference of the British Psychology Society in Liverpool on May 7.
The Science Daily reported that Latham surveyed 106 fathers and mothers in questionnaires via phone interviews. The questionnaire sought to study the relationship between moms and dads and their co-parenting strategies. The participants were all biological parents to their kids, either married or co-habiting.
"For fathers, perceptions of poor support from their partner were negatively associated with their children's behaviour. This related to more reported incidents of a child acting defiantly or deliberately breaking toys," the study revealed, according to Science Daily. "For mothers, feeling unsupported by their partners did not relate to their child's behavior," it added.
"Compared to mothering, the fathering role may be less clearly socially defined and fathers may withdraw from it. Whereas mothers -- and fathers -- may see the mother's role as less discretionary than fathers. Or it could be simply that fathers don't feel as confident or competent in their role because, although it is changing, commonly they are still less likely to be the primary child carer," said Latham in the study's conclusion about the essence of the roles of fathers in parenting.
To improve children's behaviors at home, Latham advised, "In the long term, family therapeutic interventions that aim to improve the co-parent relationship may be informed by paying particular attention to how much fathers feel supported by their co-parent."
Meanwhile, an article in The Huffington Post Canada reported that the image of fathers may indeed fade in the background. The article cited this phenomenon since dads don't carry and give birth to their kids. As written in the article, dads don't love their kids less just because moms get pregnant and give birth.
In fact, some fathers even go so far as using technology to closely supervise safety of their young kids. Fox13now.com revealed that Tennessee dad, Chris Early, used his helicopter-based gadget to watch over the safety of his eight-year-old daughter, walking to school alone.
Early shared, "I could see on the monitor that a lot of the kids were looking and pointing up and I'm sure Katie was just like, 'Aww, it's my dad.'"
His daughter, Katie, was in awe, upon discovering her dad watching over her in the sky.
"I was like, 'Oh wow,'" the child shared. "He didn't tell me then, so I was pretty surprised."
