Studies on African fatherhood represent African fathers as problematic and in South Africa, they are identified as ‘‘emotionally disengaged, physically absent, abusive and do not pay for their children's upkeep'' (Morrell & Ritcher, 2006:81). Many studies link the high rates of absent fathers to poverty and irresponsibility. Such literature is devoid of cultural factors that might be contributing to the high rates of absent fathers in most African communities. Across Southern Africa, intlawulo, a customary practice that involves the paying of a fine by a man responsible for impregnating a woman out of wedlock and his family to the pregnant woman's family. Historically, intlawulo served as a critical means of regulating and mediating unmarried fathers' involvement in their children's lives. Therefore, this explorative qualitative research project explores African fathers' experiences of intlawulo and its subsequent links to father involvement. To gauge their experiences and interpretation of intlawulo and father involvement, I conducted face-to-face in-depth qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of 8 black Xhosa speaking South African fathers from Cape Town who have gone through the intlawulo negotiations for the past five years or less. This study aimed to explore how the customary practice of intlawulo or ‘paying damages' influences a father's involvement in his child's life in Khayelitsha, an urban township within Cape Town. It argued that the payment of intlawulo regulates a father's involvement in childrearing, his interaction with and access to his child. In contrast to how fathering has been described in previous literature, this thesis argues that becoming a father is a process and intlawulo is the entry point where it can be denied, stopped and negotiated.

One emotion experienced by working parents is guilt, yet this emotion is not often studied within the work-family domain. This presentation will serve to define work-family guilt drawing from empirical and qualitative research on the construct. This presentation will also delineate findings related to work-family guilt for mothers and fathers. Lastly, this presentation will highlight the scarce research into the relationship between work-family guilt and parenting outcomes. It has been suggested by scholars that work-family guilt may influence parenting behaviors which could cause negative consequences for children. This presentation will review two studies examining work-family guilt and parenting practices.

Father involvement is a prominent topic in literature and the discourse often refers to the availability and presence of the biological father in the home. Most homes in South Africa are female headed in which fathers are absent and not involved in their children’s lives because of factors such as poverty; cultural expectations of paying for damages and pride price as well as commitment to be part of the child’s life. South Africa has one of the highest rates of non-resident fathers in Africa, with nine million children growing up without fathers. Currently there is insufficient literature on paternity, including father involvement in South Africa, hence this study. It will explore how an African child perceives father involvement, in order to inform professionals when providing interventions. A qualitative exploratory case study design was used to inductively generate themes from five learners relating to their perspective, using semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion interview. From thematic analysis of the participants’ extractions, three themes emerged as the research question answers: i) Theme 1: Impact of father presence/absence on the child; ii) Theme 2: Father’s contribution towards the family; and ii) Theme 3: Family functioning. The results encapsulate the different aspects of what a South African father’s role represents. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

One emotion experienced by working parents is guilt, yet this emotion is not often studied within the work-family domain. This presentation will serve to define work-family guilt drawing from empirical and qualitative research on the construct. This presentation will also delineate findings related to work-family guilt for mothers and fathers. Lastly, this presentation will highlight the scarce research into the relationship between work-family guilt and parenting outcomes. It has been suggested by scholars that work-family guilt may influence parenting behaviors which could cause negative consequences for children. This presentation will review two studies examining work-family guilt and parenting practices.

There has been an increase in literature involving female academic staff on precarious employment contracts and how they balance their work and family lives. However, research involving male academic staff on insecure contracts with children is limited, particularly within the South African context. My thesis addressed this gap by exploring how precariously employed men in higher education institutions in Cape Town understand the concepts of fatherhood, their own practices of fathering, and what influence their employment has on their involvement with their children. Given that precarious employment in higher education institutions is a salient problem in South Africa, this study investigated the ways in which such employment conditions in higher education shape fathering practices. This study was informed by a broader study, which aimed to understand (a) how men in precarious employment in the formal and informal employment sectors define fatherhood, (b) what practices they associate with fathering, and (c) how, if at all, their employment conditions shape their fathering practices. I conducted a qualitative research study using purposive and snowball sampling methods to procure a sample of seven men aged 34 to 57 years old. Data was collected through individual, semi-structured interviews. I used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to understand the fathers' experiences. Findings from the study show that fatherhood is constructed through the participants' ability to provide for their families and be responsible role models to their children. Having a good relationship with their children is important for the men, and they establish these relationships by spending time with their children. The findings also show that participants perceived HEIs as exploitative, relying on PhD students who are in the process of establishing their academic careers for teaching purposes. The income received by the men on these non-permanent contracts is not sufficient for them to provide for themselves and their families, and they therefore work multiple jobs so that they can receive a better income. The fathers' experiences also show that precarious employment conditions in higher education institutions enable some fathers to be involved in their children's care due to flexibility in their working hours. However, for some of the men, father and child co-residence was prohibited by migration, resulting in reduced contact with their children.

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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects that a man's attitudes towards fathering have on the level of involvement with his children. Of particular interest was whether fathering attitudes moderated some of the more consistent predictors of involvement, such as relationship quality, maternal gatekeeping, mother's and father's employment hours, a man's history with his own father, family structure, and child characteristics. A sample of 2300 men was used to evaluate the effects of fathering attitudes on engagement and warmth among children ages 2 to 8 and 9 to 11. Results indicate an inconsistent main effect between fathering attitudes and the types of involvement among the two age groups. However, moderated multiple regression analysis revealed that, in many instances, fathering attitudes completely mitigated the effect of several of the traditional predictors of involvement. Among the younger group, men with high fathering attitudes maintained high levels of engagement despite poor history with their own father and high levels of work hours, and engagement increased as maternal employment hours increased. Warmth among these men also remained unchanged at high levels of maternal gatekeeping and low levels of relationship quality. In the older group, high father attitudes mitigated the effects of relationship quality and fathers' work hours on warmth. Attitudes did not moderate engagement among the older group.

Recent studies show that actively involved fathers have positive effects on the development of children. If we consider the family as a whole unit which consists of mother, father and children, we should support the fathers to make them actively involved in their children&amp / #8217 / s life. Unfortunately, both in the world and in our country there is lack of programs which are designed specifically for fathers. The aim of this study is twofold, first is to create an example of father involvement training for fathers of preschool children and second is to investigate the effects of father involvement training on the involvement level and perceptions of fathering role. The subjects of this study were from O.D.T.&Uuml / preschool and kindergarten, which is located in the university campus. Twenty fathers, ten for experimental, ten for control group participated in the study. The experimental design was used, in which 2 groups were compared on pretest and posttest measures by using the Father Involvement Test and the Role of The Father Questionnaire. The experimental group was given a 6 week involvement training. In order to explore who do the activities about childrearing, descriptive statistics were used. In order to explore the differences between two groups, nonparametric statistics, Mann Whitney U test and Wilcoxon tests were used. The results revealed that there was significant differences between posttest Role of The Father Questionnaire scores of subjects in experimental and control group conditions. Moreover, according to evaluations that were done at the end of the training, it could be stated that the program contribted positively to the communication between fathers and children.

There is a dearth of research focusing on fathering in families of color. The present study argues that ecological factors, especially SES and neighborhood quality, exert a strong influence on racial and ethnic differences in fathering role identity, which in turn affect fathering role performance. The primary goal of the present study is thus to investigate the impact of ecological factors on what it means to be a good father among African American (n = 308), Latino American (n = 598), Asian American (n = 580), and white fathers (n = 2813) by using a nationally representative sample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), and to test identity theory by examining fathering identity as a primary determinant of fathering role performance. The core premise of identity theory is that society is the main source in shaping self (i.e., identity), and in turn, contributes to the way people behave (Stryker, 1968). The present study tested identity theory by examining the associations between domain-level psychological centralities and domain-specific fathering performances, and also to test whether effects of psychological centralities and contextual factors override those of race and ethnicity. Overall, the results from this study considerably buttressed identity theory. Consistent with the cultural-ecological model (Ogbu, 1981), which posits that ecological conditions shapes culture-specific socialization goals, racial and ethnic differences in the fathering psychological centrality were found because fathers in the same group historically share similar circumstances. However, the heterogeneity of the psychological centrality within each group was remarkable because their current conditions are vastly multifarious. Specifically, the lower their SES, the more likely that they believe that providing for their children is central to their identity as a father. In studying fathers of color, previous approaches often resulted in the unwitting spread of stereotypical images by contrasting minority fathers from at-risk population with middle-class white fathers, because such approaches failed to consider the effects of contextual factors on fathering and to include multiple forms of father involvement. The results from this study clearly show that racial and ethnic differences are subtle once contextual factors are taken into account. / text

The central theoretical statement of this study stated that fathers have an active and effective role as mentors in transmitting values to the family and should be equipped for taking up this role, which may be applied in a pastoral-theological model. The idea of values for the father with regard to his role as mentor is defined and investigated in this study. The article format has been used in this thesis so that it consists of five articles which form a unity. In article one Scriptural pointers for the leaders and fathers being mentors to their followers (mentees) in the Old Testament are discussed. From the information summarized from the article, it is deduced that the leaders and fathers from the Old Testament served as mentors to their followers (mentees) with regard to values. Any leader or mentor can apply the principles and guidelines from the Old Testament to fathering, mentoring and transmitting values to a situation in everyday life. Article two deals with scriptural pointers for the leaders and father-figures as mentors to their followers (mentees) in the New Testament. From the information summarized from the article, it is deduced that the leaders and father figures from the New Testament served as mentors to their followers (mentees) with regard to values. Discipleship indicated the importance and significance of followers (mentees). Any leader or mentor can apply the guidelines and principles from the New Testament about leading, fathering, mentoring, discipling with regard to values even today. In article three the literature study on the fields of psychology, social work, psychiatric nursing and education were investigated in terms of family, fathering, mentoring and values. With regard to values those values according to Joubert (1986) and Heenan (2004) were used and integrated with values for the role of the father as mentor in the family context. The complexity of families and family structures in the real world were identified and discussed. The recommendations from this article are used to direct the empirical research on the role of the father as mentor with regard to values. The broader aim is to show how society may be impacted positively. Article four (chapter 5) deals with the empirical research that found that mentoring is needed and fathers should be mentors to their families. They should also be equipped with Christian values (the co-researchers consistently referred to Christian values which will serve as recommendation for further studies) in order to show that they can effect positive change to influence society. In article five (chapter 6) contours of a pastoral-theological model for the father as mentor in the transmission of Christian values are formulated. This model could possibly be applied to other spheres of life such as institutions (schools, colleges and universities), churches, societies and businesses to raise the effectiveness of these organizations through the mentoring of values. Topics for further research: * Equipping the mother as mentor in the transmission of Christian values. * Equipping children with Christian values so that they may be mentors to their peers. * Equipping children with Christian values so that they can be resistant to bad and inappropriate behaviour. * Equipping the family with Christian values so that they can be a mentor unit to other families in society. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Pastoral))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.