A responsividade e o envolvimento paterno em homens que exercem níveis de cuidado distintos no primeiro ano de vida do bebê

Abstract

Some studies on fatherhood in male single-parent families, male homoaffective families, and hetero-affective families with men involved in direct childcare indicate that fathers who are more directly involved in these activities in the first year of babies’ lives may be more sensitive to them. This study investigated paternal sensitivity and involvement in men who exercised different levels of care in the baby's first year of life. Three levels of paternal care were defined based on the literature: primary (perform direct care, mainly basic care, addressing the baby's physical and emotional needs similarly to the partner), secondary (perform indirect care frequently and assist the partner or a second caregiver in direct care when necessary) and provider (take part in the indirect care of the family's material provision and rarely perform direct care). Starting from the concept of level of paternal care, two complementary studies were carried out. Study 1 was a descriptive study that characterized subjective aspects of paternal involvement in fathers who exercised three different levels of care during the baby’s fifth month: primary, secondary, and provider. The participants were 10 first-time fathers (eight hetero-affective and two homoaffective fathers) who self-reported childcare and other activities performed with the baby in a questionnaire (via Google Forms) and answered the Semi-structured Interview on Father Involvement in an online session of approximately 50 minutes. The questionnaire results allowed us to classify the ten participants into the three levels of caregiving. The results from the thematic analysis of the interviews showed differences in the way the primary, secondary, and provider caregivers dealt with three fundamental themes of fatherhood. The first theme, fathers' time, revealed that secondary and provider caregivers perceived lack of time as a strong reason for little involvement in basic childcare. In contrast, the boundaries between time for work and time for the baby were less demarcated for primary caregivers. The second theme, fathers' interaction, indicated that all fathers reported advances in their children's motor development affecting interactions. However, only primary caregivers reported cognitive advances and their repercussions on interaction with their infants. The third theme, fathers' lap, demonstrated remarkable difficulties faced by secondary and provider caregivers to comfort the infants when they were distressed and to put them to sleep, which caused anguish, especially for provider caregivers. Study 2 analyzed paternal involvement and sensitivity in fathers throughout the infant's first year of life. We adopted a longitudinal multiple case study design with assessments in the infants’ 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th month. The participants were three parents who participated in Study 1 and their infants: one primary caregiver, one secondary caregiver, and one provider caregiver. In each of the four assessments, the three fathers answered a semi-structured interview on father involvement and infants and fathers were observed during a 10-minute free-play session. We proceeded data analysis in four steps. In the first step, the interviews’ content was transcribed and described to gain a holistic understanding (Yin, 2010) of the paternal involvement patterns. In the second step, the observations were submitted to microanalysis. The 10-minute videos were coded in 12-seconds intervals. In the first half of the interval, infant behavior was coded into six categories: smiles, emits sounds, cries, moves/grabs, plays with the father, and plays alone. Paternal responses were coded along the whole 12-second interval in seven categories: speaks to the baby (non-directive speech), smiles to the baby, holds/rocks the baby, stimulates with or without an object, destabilizes/moves the baby's body, commands (directive speeach), and acts intrusively. Reliability levels of the two independent coders reached 0,78 for infants’ behavioral categories and 0,84 for paternal responses. In the third step, we used Yin’s (2010) logical model to articulate data on paternal involvement to data on paternal sensitivity. The results indicated that the primary caregiver, who had been continuously involved with direct caregiving along the infant’s first year, especially with basic care, did not report difficulties in complex tasks such as soothing the baby, and displayed high frequencies of non-directive speech, in addition to easily engaging the infant in the interaction. The secondary caregiver was occasionally involved in direct caregiving in the fifth month, but reported a progressive increase in his involvement in basic care on weekends over the course of the first year. He reported some difficulties soothing the baby and putting him to sleep, and displayed a decrease in non-directive speech and intrusiveness, and an increase in directive speeach during interactions along the four assessments. The provider caregiver, who was rarely involved with basic care tasks, reported remarkable difficulties in soothing the baby, and putting him to sleep, in addition to having responded with frequent commands and intrusive responses to the infant's behavior during interaction. In the fourth step of the analysis, the cross-case synthesis technique (Stake, 2005) showed that, compared to the primary and secondary caregiving fathers, the provider caregiver used less non-directive speech, was more intrusive and engaged the baby less during the interaction. The findings presented in this thesis corroborate the idea that the continuous involvement in basic care activities offers opportunities for the father to perceive and train skills to sensitively respond to the infant’s behavioral changes during the first year. In addition, the father's involvement in basic care contributes to reduction of gender inequalities in hetero-affective families. This pioneering work, therefore, establishes the concept of level of paternal care, recommending that this be a central dimension in research on fatherhood in the first year of life. Furthermore, has the potential to inspire several other investigations that portray the role of the father in the construction of parenting in which the father-child relationship develops with intimacy and trust.