Social policy suggestions of Turkish fathers to increase father involvement

Social Policies for Fathers

Abstract

Father involvement is known as one of the most important thing for the healthy development of children almost all stages of development. Today there are a lot of study indicating that positive and high levels of father involvement have a positive effect on children’s social, cognitive, emotional and physical development. Fathers’ active and positive participation to all kinds of child-related activities in the family as much as mother is required to support children’s healthy development. Unfortunately, still most of the studies indicates that fathers do not participate all child-related activities in the family as much as mothers if the society they lived does not support high and quality father involvement. Although this seems as a personal preference, it is not since today we clearly known that father’s involvement can be encouraged through societal expectations and father-friendly social policies that encourages fathers’ involvement. Strong and father-friendly social policies have the power to promote father involvement and egalitarian roles in the family. In Turkey, social structure and social policies are not so strong to support high father involvement. Instead, they encourage traditional gender roles that emphasize provider role of fathers and primary caregiver role of mothers. In this qualitative descriptive study, 20 biological-resident father of 4-6 years old children were asked to suggest social policies which they thought to promote fathers’ high involvement. Fathers’ answers are discussed in the context of Turkish social policies.