{"id":6209,"date":"2017-10-13T04:49:03","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T20:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/the-business-of-being-dad\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:08:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:08:05","slug":"the-business-of-being-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/the-business-of-being-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"The business of being dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

21st century fatherhood can be a challenging, rewarding and complicated business. Changing expectations of how fathers participate in family life mean that many dads are more intimately involved with their children than previous generations, and new research is demonstrating just how important the father-child connection is to family functioning and wellbeing.<\/p>\n

In his project, Paternal and Maternal Reflective Functioning in the Western Australian Peel Child Health Study<\/a>, <\/em>Dr Dawson Cooke<\/a>, whose position at Curtin is funded by The Fathering Project<\/a>, assessed how well families understood both their babies\u2019 and their own mental and emotional states, and how the father-baby relationship was related to family functioning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am particularly interested in the very early stages of the father-infant relationship because I believe if a good quality relationship is established from the start of a child\u2019s life, this provides a resilient foundation for the father\u2019s involvement throughout their lifespan,\u201d Dr Cooke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe assessed the parent capacity to consider mental states in the self and the infant, which is called \u2018Reflective Functioning\u2019 (RF) or \u2018Mentalizing\u2019. It\u2019s all about thoughts, feelings and intentions, and how these influence behaviours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found was that the quality of family functioning was related to the fathers\u2019 RF more than the mothers\u2019 RF. Also, the quality of the mother-infant relationship was not predictive of the quality of their partner\u2019s relationship with the infant \u2013 these two relationships were independent.<\/p>\n

\"Dr
Dr Dawson Cooke and his family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c[The fathers\u2019] RF was also strongly related to men\u2019s identification with the fathering role, more father-time with the child on weekends, and father\u2019s parenting self-efficacy.<\/p>\n

Dr Cooke, who is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine, said the study results also indicated that fathers and mothers thought about, and interacted with, their babies in different ways and, in line with previous research, women seemed more adept at gauging the emotional and mental states of their children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study showed that fathers indicated more prementalizing than mothers \u2013 meaning they scored higher in a measure of non-reflective behaviours or attitudes in the relationship. This finding is consistent with research that shows women to have greater capacity to think in terms of mental states, and men to have lower awareness of emotions and less capacity to describe them compared to women,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cResults in this study indicated some possible reasons for these differences \u2013 the amount of time spent with the infant, and identification with the parenting role, were both factors that might explain why mothers have some advantage in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dr
Dr Dawson Cooke<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Historically, mothers have taken on an active parenting and nurturing role, and there have always been cultural expectations that motherhood comes naturally to women. There is now a better understanding of the challenges many mothers undergo, such as isolation, limited family support and pre or post-natal depression and anxiety, and there are services to support mothers at all stages of parenting. Paradoxically, there are limited services for fathers who may be experiencing similar difficulties.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany parents, mothers and fathers, have times of doubting themselves and fearing they are not good enough. At these times, it is important to seek support from friends, family or services such as helplines, your child health nurse or maybe counselling,\u201d Dr Cooke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost early parenting services are designed to support mothers, and are staffed exclusively by women so, although these services might be excellent in many ways, they are not easily accessed by men and sometimes might not accommodate men very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many great resources online, such as raisingchildren.net.au<\/a>. Ngala<\/a> is a great local service in Western Australia, which supports mums and dads in the early years of parenting, and The Fathering Project<\/a> specifically aims to support fathering, and has a popular program for dads with primary school aged children. The Fathering Project is hosting The Big Campout<\/a> at Domain Stadium on 14 October for Dads looking for a way to connect with their child and have some fun together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many dads are more involved with their children than previous generations, and new research is demonstrating how important the father-child connection is to family functioning and wellbeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4224,"featured_media":6210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-6209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"Want to learn more?","content":"

Read Dr Cooke’s research paper Paternal and Maternal Reflective Functioning in the Western Australian Peel Child Health Study<\/a>,\u00a0or\u00a0discover other research at\u00a0The Fathering Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/792X420-FatherfeedingBabyiStock-534484368.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Arianne","last_name":"Chavez","display_name":"Arianne Chavez"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-16 22:31:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6209"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=6209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}