• Jennifer Baxter, Diana Smart
• Australian Institute of Family Studies

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04 October 2011There remains much to be learned about the ways in which Australian fathers contribute to families and feel about themselves as fathers.

There has been growing recognition of the importance of fathers to families in recent years. Societal trends, such as rising levels of employment among mothers of young children and recognition of the importance of the father-child relationship, have given more prominence to the contribution that fathers make to family life. Governments are increasingly interested in creating conditions that can foster fathers' involvement in families; for example, through promoting more flexible working arrangements or by ensuring that children maintain contact with fathers following family breakdown. This growing interest in the role of fathers has been mirrored in the scientific community, with a burgeoning of interest in research on fathers. However, there has been a limited amount of research on fathers in Australia, with the result that there remains much to be learned about the ways in which Australian fathers contribute to families and feel about themselves as fathers.

New information about fathering in Australia has recently been published, in a report titled Fathering in Australia Among Couple Families With Young Children (Baxter & Smart, 2010). The report aimed to increase understanding of the many ways in which fathers in couple families who are parents of young children contribute to family life. The aspects examined were fathers' time investment with children, their supportiveness as partners, their financial contribution, their parenting behaviours and styles, and their perceptions of their own adequacy as fathers. The impact of fathers on children's wellbeing was also examined. This article presents an edited version of the executive summary from the report, with the addition of selected research highlights to illustrate some of the key findings.

The report made use of data from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), a large-scale, nationally representative study of children and families that is following the experiences and wellbeing of two cohorts of children and their families, from infancy to the threshold of adulthood. The children in the LSAC were, at the first wave of the study in 2004, aged 0-1 years (the B cohort) and 4-5 years (the K cohort). The data from Wave 1 were used, along with those at Wave 2, when these same children were aged 2-3 years and 6-7 years respectively, and at Wave 3, when they were aged 4-5 years and 8-9 years. The availability of data at these different ages of the children allowed analyses of how fathering may change as children grow through these early years.

LSAC is unusual in that it obtains the perspectives of mothers and fathers, and collects information on a very broad range of influences on child and family wellbeing. It is thus particularly appropriate for the investigation of fathering in the Australian context.