Do practitioners in your setting directly engage with fathers and encourage them to regularly play with their children? The importance of dads drawing, telling stories and singing with their young children has been highlighted by a new report, which found it can bring an educational advantage once they start school.
According to the research, led by the University of Leeds, these frequent, fun interactions between dads and three-year-olds – even for just ten minutes a day – can help children to do better at primary school by age five. Dads being involved at age five also helped improve scores in seven-year-olds’ Key Stage Assessments.
POSITIVE INFLUENCE
What a difference a dad makes. Paternal Involvement and its Effects on Children’s Education (PIECE) by Dr Helen Norman, research fellow at Leeds University Business School, and Dr Jeremy Davies, head of impact and communications at the Fatherhood Institute, used a representative sample of nearly5,000 mother-father households in England from the Millennium Cohort Study (see Further information) and analysed primary school test scores for five- and seven-year-olds. For ‘father’, the statistical analysis included any parent who identified as either a biological, step or adoptive father to the child, although nearly all (99 per cent) were biological fathers.
‘Encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child’s life, is critical,’ says Norman.
Dads’ involvement impacted positively on their children’s school achievement regardless of the child’s gender, ethnicity, age in the school year and household income, according to the report.
There were different effects when mums and dads took part in the same activities – the data showed that mums had more of an impact on young children’s emotional and social behaviours than educational achievement.
‘We weren’t expecting to find that fathers’ and mothers’ involvement had such a different relationship with the child’s development outcomes,’ comments Norman. ‘It was interesting to find that fathers’ involvement seemed to matter the most for educational attainment, whereas mothers’ involvement mattered more for helping to regulate a child’s emotional, conduct, hyperactive and social behaviour. This demonstrates how fathers and mothers bring different things to the parent-child relationship.’
Norman notes that analysis for the research focused on one particular household type – children in two-parent, opposite sex households. ‘The relationship between father and mother involvement, and children’s educational attainment, is likely to change in different family types – such as same sex households, single parent households, or households in which the father is absent,’ she says. ‘Here, involvement from significant others, such as a grandparent, may have equal or even more important effects on children, and this would be an interesting avenue for future research to explore.’
INVOLVING FATHERS
Norman believes that as a society we still don’t do enough to convey the message that fathers are important when it comes to caregiver roles. ‘The ideal of “good fathering” is still tied to being the main economic provider to the family, and societal structures are set up to support and perpetuate this,’ she says. ‘For example, in comparison to mothers, fathers tend to work longer hours, are less likely to access and use flexible working, are entitled to only a limited two-week period of paternity leave, which means it makes more financial and logistical sense for the mother to adapt or reduce her work to assume more of the childcare.’
A survey conducted for the PIECE project, completed by about 250 UK fathers, indicated that many schools and educational settings only send communications about the child to the mother, who is usually the first, and sometimes only, point of contact for the child.
‘Often parenting and baby groups are run and primarily comprise women,’ adds Norman. ‘This suggests that care is still embedded within society as a maternal trait and responsibility. Although society is slowly recognising the importance of fathers’ caregiver roles, fathers are still largely regarded as the secondary carer in most family units.’
The PIECE report includes a set of recommendations for early years practitioners to support fathers’ childcare involvement, while remembering to be sensitive to different family situations, such as if a father is absent.
‘The key message is that supporting both fathers and mothers to be involved in structured types of activities with their children– like reading, playing, arts and crafts, doing sports – is important because of the complementary benefits each parent can bring to a child’s cognitive and educational development,’ says Norman.
Other suggestions include:
- Actively reaching out and getting to know children’s fathers as well as mothers.
- Ensuring the father’s contact details are on file and are being used so that both fathers and mothers are included in communications about the child. This is particularly important for families in which the father is not resident in the same household.
- Holding father-specific events and targeting fathers to do activities – such as reading – can be useful, as this emphasises the importance of their input.
CASE STUDY: London Early Years Foundation (LEYF)
‘We encourage all parents and carers to take part in the children’s learning, no matter their gender. Dads are key and we continually highlight this by always making an effort to involve them,’ says pedagogy manager at LEYF and lead of the nursery group’s Men in Childcare Group, Konstantinos Skordas.
‘We follow our unique LEYF pedagogy which includes a strand that we call “harmonious relationships”. This includes encouraging inclusivity and learning from others.
‘Home learning is an area where we do a lot of work with parents and engage them in their child’s education. We have pedagogical conversations through which we assure fathers of their importance and support them in their big role to help progress their child’s learning outside of nursery. This comes back to the idea that two parents, being two different people, will have two different approaches and two different strengths. The way that fathers play with their children is different to mothers, therefore the more a father is actively involved in a child’s care and education, the more support their child will have in the development of their communication and language skills.
‘We do lots of things to help fathers feel part of nursery life at LEYF. All of our nurseries host specific “stay and play” events on Father’s Day for dads to meet and feel part of a community. Being a dad can bring its unique challenges, so it’s important for us to reach out and be a place for support.
‘I think having an above average number of male teachers definitely helps fathers feel more included. When they see that the nursery space is not just a “woman’s space”, a nursery can feel more welcoming. This is not to say that nurseries without any male staff don’t also do all they can to make both parents feel relaxed and comfortable. Inclusivity is a big part of who we are and we work closely with both parents all throughout their child’s journey.’
FURTHER INFORMATION
- “What a difference a dad makes”: https://bit.ly/40n9ARr
- PIECE briefing: https://piecestudy.org/toolkit
- Millennium Cohort Study: https://bit.ly/49lDPMF