INSTALACIONES ELECTRICAS

The long running issue of whether fathering differs from mothering, and if so, whether this is simply a product of lower father involvement in caregiving, remains contested. Therefore, one of the primary aims of this thesis was to examine parenting quality and parent-child interaction in stay-at-

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home father families compared to stay-at-home mother and dual-earner families, to better understand the relative influence of caregiving role and parent gender on parenting.

With respect to parenting quality, the data were partially supportive of the hypothesis that stay-at-home fathers would show a higher quality of parenting than the fathers in other family types, as stay-at-home fathers were found to show significantly higher quality of parenting than breadwinner fathers. This indicates that, amongst fathers, caregiver status did have some influence on quality of parenting. These findings are in keeping with the limited number of studies in this field of research. Reflecting on her large qualitative study of male primary caregivers, Doucet (2004) commented that a sample of self-defining stay-at-home fathers are likely to be very nurturing, sensitive caregivers. Previous literature has found that stay-at-home fathers report reasonably high levels of confidence in their parenting, have comparable levels of parenting self-efficacy to mothers in similar studies (Rochlen, McKelley, et al., 2008), and are highly satisfied with their role as the primary caregiver (Rochlen, Suizzo, et al., 2008). Yet, these studies included stay-at-home father families only and used affective rather than behavioural measures of parenting. Unlike the present study, comparisons between the quality of parenting displayed by stay-at-home fathers and other caregivers have rarely been conducted.

Dual-earner fathers’ scores on quality of parenting fell between the two other types of fathers, and there were no significant differences in parenting between dual-earner fathers and stay-at-home fathers. Previous research has shown that dual-earner fathers, especially those who do not work full- time, are more involved in parenting than breadwinner fathers who are expected to work full-time (Craig et al., 2014). However, it is important to note that spending more time with one’s children does necessarily translate into more positive parenting, and instead the quality of interactions during the increased time spent together matters more for parenting than just the quantity of time together (Lamb & Tamis-Lemonda, 2004; Palkovitz, 2019). With this in mind, fathers caregiving for their children alone, known as ‘sole responsibility’ (Russell, 1983) or ‘solo care’ (Wilson & Prior, 2010) may, in part,

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explain the differences found between fathers in the present study. Scholarship suggests that when parents engage in solo care this gives them the chance, as the only parent available to the child, to be sensitive in their parenting and respond to their child’s signals and needs, regardless of gender or primary/secondary caregiver status (Wilson & Prior, 2010). As stay-at-home fathers and dual-earner fathers are expected to engage in a high volume of solo care, this may have contributed to the higher quality of parenting demonstrated by these fathers compared to breadwinner fathers, who, in comparison, spend significantly more time in the provider role.

In terms of the quality of parenting shown by primary caregivers, parenting quality did not differ between stay-at-home fathers, stay-at-home mothers and dual-earner mothers. Primary caregiver fathers in the present sample, like the primary caregiver mothers, demonstrated high- quality parenting, characterised by warmth, sensitivity and acceptance. These findings corroborate other work on primary caregiving fathers which reported that involved fathers have the same opportunity for high-quality, sensitive parenting as mothers (Pruett, 2000). The findings of this study are also in line with research on same-sex parent families demonstrating that gay fathers show high parenting quality (Farr, Forssell, & Patterson, 2010; Golombok et al., 2014; Golombok et al., 2017; Ryan, 2007), suggesting male primary caregivers are equally capable at parenting compared to mothers. However, the circumstances of gay fathers are somewhat different to that of heterosexual primary caregiving fathers, as gay fathers may feel less pressure to conform to masculine norms and may more readily embrace nurturing qualities (Bigner & Bozett, 1990; Stacey, 2011). Thus, the present findings, showing that regardless of gender, primary caregiving parents show similar quality of parenting, add further confidence to the view that parent gender is not directly related to parenting quality (Lamb, 2012). That dual-earner mothers had comparable scores to stay-at-home mothers and fathers, despite less time in the primary caregiving role across the week, may be due to mothers in employment remaining highly involved in caregiving, as demonstrated by previous research (Chesley, 2011), and the pervasive influence of an intensive mothering ideology, regardless of working status

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(Johnston & Swanson, 2007). This suggests that, amongst primary caregiver parents, neither gender nor being in paid employment influenced parenting quality.

The present study also compared the quality of parent-child interaction across family types, as examined through the parent-child observation task. Few previous studies have directly compared the interaction quality of parent-child dyads between families with primary and secondary caregiver fathers. Furthermore, research overwhelmingly focuses on mother-child observations, rather than including observations of both mothers and fathers interacting with their children (Volling et al., 2019). When examining parent-child interaction between fathers, differences emerged between stay-at- home fathers and breadwinner fathers, revealing a higher quality of parent-child interaction in stay- at-home father families. It is likely that the highly involved fathers were able to be more responsive and warm to their children during the play task due to the amount of time they spend interacting with their children alone. This difference between stay-at-home fathers and breadwinner fathers mirrors the parenting quality findings. Further, the findings complement Lewis et al.’s (2009) study which reported that primary caregiver fathers and their infants scored higher on emotional tone during playful observations than secondary caregiver fathers. Yet, it is important to note that the effect size of this difference was small, and no differences emerged between stay-at-home fathers and dual- earner fathers. The lack of differences between families may be, in part, attributable to the clustering of scores at the top end of the scale of the observational task, which is not surprising given the high level of functioning demonstrated by most families in the study.

In terms of parent-child interaction quality amongst primary caregivers, there were no differences between stay-at-home fathers and stay-at-home mothers. However, there was a difference between stay-at-home fathers and dual-earner mothers, with fathers showing slightly higher parent-child interaction quality. The first finding indicates that stay-at-home parents, regardless of gender, show comparable interaction quality with their children. These findings diverge from some of the other research on primary caregiving fathers, which presented mixed results, such