Father’s Involvement and Health:What is the Connection?

Jessica Ball, MPH, PhD

School of Child and Youth Care

University of Victoria

Does father’s involvement directly affect child health?

Fathering defined: more than paternity

Father involvement:

direct father-child interaction

e.g. care-giving, playing,

taking to dentist

What are direct impacts

on child health?

Does father’s involvement indirectly affect child health?

Father’s contributions to child’s environment e.g. generating family income, relationship with child’s mother, housing, community interface

What are indirect impacts of father’s behaviour beyond the child on the child’s health? On father’s health?

Is being involved as a father good for men’s health?

What do we know?

‘Common knowledge’: it’s self-evident

Values-driven assumptions or biases:

“Fathers play essential roles

in children’s lives”

“Every child needs a father”

Little research based evidence

Why?

It’s a mom’s world after all….

Mother- centrism: research, policies & programs focus on

maternal-child well-being

Burden of care for children falls more to women (traditionally & with increase in lone mother households)

Priority for investments (e.g., Maternal Child Health programs, Canadian Prenatal Nutrition and Pregnancy Outreach Program)

Limitations of how we are looking at fathering

Problems with measuring ‘fathering’• Father absence: separation, divorce,

non-custodial• Father’s time spent with child: quantity vs quality• Direct involvement vs indirect contributions

Focus of more research on development than on health.

But a health-based rationale for supporting father’s involvement is likely to attract more social investments.

How would we measure health outcomes separate from developmental outcomes?

Focus of research on effects of

father absence rather than

effects of varying forms of

father presence

Some evidence of positive effects of fathering on the father

What other ways could we ask questions about father’s contributions to child & family health?

Multiple impacts … Multi-generational implications

To find out more…www.ecdip.org