Father’s engagement in direct care is associated with children’s social competence for preschool boys but not girls in Peru

Abstract

Evidence shows that fathers have an important role in child development, but few studies explore this influence in the Latin American context. This study aimed to contribute to bridge this gap by analyzing in a Peruvian urban, mainly middle socioeconomic sample, the associations between different dimensions of father engagement (i.e., interaction in direct care, teaching/discipline, and play activities) and children’s social adjustment (i.e., social competence, anxiety-withdrawal and anger-aggression) during the preschool years, while controlling for child’s age and parents’ education, and testing the interaction effects between father’s engagement and child’s gender. Two hundred three 2-parent families with preschool children (M = 52.82, SD = 10.06; 57.63% were girls) participated in the study. Multiple ordinary least squares regression models were conducted. Only for social competence, an interaction between father’s engagement in direct care and child’s gender (boys) was found. These results contribute to highlight the importance of fathers in domains traditionally associated with mothers in a Latin American context.