• Fathers often want to be present for their children and contribute to household tasks, but they can lack opportunities and confidence; they may see themselves as “helpers” instead of parents.
• Australian fathers in our small study reported that they spent more time with their children during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and they saw the resulting benefits for themselves and their children.
• Despite parental leave policies and opportunities for more flexible working arrangements, fathers still experience an unspoken stigma in the workplace about taking leave or leaving work early to spend time with their children. In some workplaces, this changed following pandemic lockdowns.

How were fathers affected by changes in parenting during COVID-19 lockdowns?

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown orders caused an abrupt and complex disruption to conventional patterns of work and home life for many families.

For example, in a U.K. study, at the start of the pandemic, parents of children younger than 12 spent nearly 50 more hours per week caring for their children than they did before the pandemic. Although most of this additional child care was provided by mothers, fathers also increased their involvement in child care and household tasks, at least at the beginning of the pandemic.

We explored fathers’ experiences of lockdown and the impact of this increased time with their children on men’s views of their relationship with their children and their family-work life balance.

We interviewed 15 Australian fathers, aged between 33 and 59, who were part of a larger study investigating fathers’ involvement in parenting young children at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most parenting research captures only mothers’ experiences, and during the pandemic, most studies focused on the number of hours parents spent on different household and child care activities.

In contrast, our study looked at how fathers felt about their parenting and work-family life balance. Our aim was to identify whether lockdown experiences served as a catalyst for some fathers to think differently about their future parenting and how they wanted to spend their time.

Exploring fathers’ perspectives on parenting prior to and at the start of the pandemic

The Australian fathers we talked to were all married to women and lived with their children (ages 4 months to 10 years). Most fathers were employed full-time and worked from home during the pandemic. We interviewed them about four main topics:

1. The types of activities they did with their children before versus during COVID-19 lockdowns
2. Their reflections about their children and themselves as parents
3. The impact of COVID-19 on sharing household tasks
4. Their attitudes toward flexible working arrangements

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

Finding 1: Fathers valued “being present” with their children

We analyzed recordings of our interviews with fathers to identify commonalities in the responses. The three main themes we identified reflected the importance of being present as a father:

1. Fathers reported an ongoing desire to be present for their children.
2. Despite the stressors of lockdowns, fathers valued the opportunity to spend more time with their children and to witness how they developed new skills, interests, and personality traits.
3. Fathers reported feeling conflicting pressures from their workplace and at home that were barriers to being present.

Fathers said one of the more fundamental learning experiences of the lockdown was that they noticed the extent to which their engagement with their children affected their relationship positively.

Studies have shown the importance of fathers taking an active role in their children’s development, with fathers experiencing a sense of loss from missing important milestones and having a perceived lack of closeness with their children. The increase in shared experiences during the pandemic may have a long-term positive impact on fathers and their children.

Finding 2: The pandemic led to some changes in fathers’ roles and experiences

We followed up with 10 fathers one year after the initial interviews to examine the impact of their experiences. Although many couples in the United Kingdom with young children returned to the traditional gender divide in child care and household responsibilities within six months, our follow-up survey revealed that 9 of the 10 Australian fathers had changed their working patterns.

After their experiences of parenting during lockdowns, many of these fathers made changes so they could be more actively involved in their children’s care, such as doing more school pickups and dropoffs.

Positive changes in the workplace

Several fathers said they perceived positive changes in the attitudes and behaviors of their workplace managers and colleagues. Following the lockdowns, these fathers’ workplace culture shifted, with flexible hours less frowned upon and, as one father noted, “no stigma anymore.”

However, other fathers still felt an unspoken stigma in the workplace about taking leave or leaving work early to spend time with their children.

After their experiences of parenting during lockdowns, many of these fathers made changes so they could be more actively involved in their children’s care, such as doing more school pickups and dropoffs.

Finding 3: Fathers’ descriptions continued to reflect perceived roles as “assistants” in the home

When asked about division of household chores during the lockdowns, most fathers in our study used phrases such as “chipping in” or “helping out” their partners.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels

These terms were evident even among fathers who had sought an equal split in household responsibilities before the pandemic began. This idea of the father as a helper or assistant in the home may reflect a cultural norm as opposed to an unwillingness to engage in household chores.

A lack of self-confidence in fathers

Fathers in our study identified a lack of confidence in themselves and other fathers in their social circle in their ability to parent. This could be due to a lack of opportunity to spend time with their children from infancy, and to a hesitancy to seek out flexible working arrangements, which could build fathers’ skills and self-confidence in child care and household activities.

Because fathers’ roles tend to be less scripted than mothers’, they are frequently more susceptible to contextual influences.

Fathers in our study identified a lack of confidence in themselves and other fathers in their social circle in their ability to parent.

Conclusions

Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent lockdowns, the Australian fathers we interviewed valued the opportunity to spend more time with their children.

These fathers, most of whom were in stable relationships and full-time employment, said their desire to be active and present for their children was obstructed by workplace attitudes, the perception of themselves as “assisting” or “helping” with household chores, and conflicting demands at work and at home.

COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns served as catalysts for many fathers

Our findings suggest that the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and imposed lockdowns provided the opportunity for some fathers to adjust their roles and responsibilities at home, and to see the impact of these changes. Past research has come to similar conclusions when fathers lose their employment or are otherwise unable to engage in paid work.

But the widespread, sudden, synchronized disruption of schools and businesses during the lockdowns may have made this experience a unique catalyst for change.

Many of the barriers fathers mentioned, such as lack of flexible work arrangements, were removed. Fathers could pursue opportunities to be more involved in parenting, something that many said they wanted before the pandemic but were unable to pursue.

Photo by Elina Fairytale from Pexels

How can we better balance parenting and work for fathers?

• Fathers should seek out workplaces with a culture that supports parental leave and flexible working conditions. These allow fathers to be more involved in their children’s lives and can strengthen their confidence in parenting.
• Families and employers should remember that the benefits of fathers taking parental leave and flexible work arrangements extend to the whole family. Fathers and their children gain valuable time together, while parenting partners also benefit from sharing tasks and responsibilities.
• Families can reflect on the changes they experienced during the lockdown and identify ways to recreate some of the benefits, even as the global pandemic has subsided and lockdowns are no longer happening.

The post Fathers’ views on family and work after COVID-19 lockdowns appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Babies’ intake of new information that is emotionally relevant might vary depending on when they last slept.
• After being awake for an extended period, babies become attuned to negative emotional information.
• Supporting babies in their sleep requirements, such as by maintaining consistent bedtime rituals, can support their well-being.

Sleep helps babies grow and develop

Have you ever planned to take your baby to playgroup but decided not to because it was nearly naptime? Many parents assume that their baby’s readiness to engage with others is connected to how wide awake or sleepy they are. But does all their learning happen only when they are wide awake?

Babies were actually better at recognizing angry and sad faces after they had been awake for a longer time.

Babies spend most of their time sleeping. Rather than being a waste of time, sleep helps their growing bodies and brains: Sleep plays an important role in babies’ physical growth and cognitive development, including their learning and memory.

Babies who nap soon after learning new information remember more of the newly acquired information and can use it more effectively to solve new problems than can infants who do not nap soon after learning.

Compared to these insights into the benefits of sleep when it occurs after learning, we know little about the relevance of infant sleep that occurs prior to a learning opportunity.

In everyday life, parents might observe their baby getting cranky when naptime or bedtime approaches. However, researchers have not extensively studied whether babies process information differently depending on whether they have recently slept.

Does sleep enhance babies’ learning of emotional information?

Surprisingly little research has been conducted on whether infants’ learning of emotional information is affected by their sleep patterns. To start addressing this gap in knowledge, we asked: What are the effects of sleep timing on six-month-olds’ recognition of emotional faces?

Photo: Tim Dennell. Creative Commons.

We focused on recognizing emotional faces because faces are frequently encountered and are important visual stimuli for babies. Babies learn about faces quickly.

From birth, babies prefer to look at faces over other visual patterns. They quickly begin to recognize the face of their caregiver, and prefer to look at faces more like the ones in their environment (e.g., preferring faces of people of their race over faces of people of other races).

Beyond the value of recognizing familiar faces, faces are also important because they display social and emotional cues that mirror a person’s mood. Keeping in mind who looked friendly and who looked angry might be particularly important for babies, who depend on the care of others for their survival and comfort.

Studying infant sleep and recognition of emotional faces

We were interested in discovering how easily babies recognized human faces showing different emotional expressions based on whether the babies had recently slept or been awake for an extended period.

Because research has shown that sleep benefits babies’ learning and memory, we predicted that babies would find it easier to keep emotional faces in mind when they were well rested than to do so when they were sleepy.

We visited 17 six-month-olds and their caregivers in their homes over two days. One day, we visited after the babies had awakened from a recent and long nap. The other day, we visited toward the end of the babies’ longest period of wakefulness (which averaged 140 minutes).

The babies in our study may have been better at recognizing sad and angry faces when they were sleepy because the negative information matched their own current emotional state.

On both occasions, we had each baby sit on their caregiver’s lap and tested infants’ visual memory through a procedure commonly used in research.

Babies were shown pictures of female adult faces displaying neutral, sad, or angry expressions.

We filmed babies’ looking times to each face using a hidden camera, arranging the presentation in the same way each time: First, babies saw a picture of a person (for example, looking angry). Next, they saw the same picture next to a picture of a new person with the same emotional expression as the first one.

When babies are shown a picture for a longer time, they grow tired of it (just as adults do) and pay less attention. When they see a new picture alongside the old picture, they pay more attention to the new one, but only if they remember the old one. If they do not remember the old picture, they might look at both the old and the new pictures for the same amount of time.

Photo: Hessam Nabavi. Unsplash.

Babies had better memory for angry and sad faces after being awake

Using this logic, we found some surprising results. In contrast to our predictions that recent napping would strengthen memory, babies were actually better at recognizing angry and sad faces after they had been awake for a longer time.

They failed to recognize these kinds of faces when they had recently slept. In other words, it appeared that the babies were particularly receptive to emotionally negative information after they had been awake for a long time.

How might babies see their social world at different stages in their sleep-wake patterns?

The babies in our study may have been better at recognizing sad and angry faces when they were sleepy because the negative information matched their own current emotional state.

As babies get tired, they can become grumpy which, in turn, might lead them to process information that matches this state. Researchers call this mood-congruent learning. While we did not test this explanation in our study, it should be an avenue for further research.

Photo: Jerald Jackson. Creative Commons.

Although our study was small, the results suggest one mechanism that might link early sleep problems and later impairments in mental well-being. Assuming that sleep problems regularly lead to fatigue and delayed sleep onset, affected babies might be susceptible to taking in emotionally negative information efficiently and storing it in their memory.

As a consequence, the developing knowledge base of infants with sleep problems versus infants without sleep problems could be quite different, leading to different, perhaps more pessimistic, views on the (social) world.

These speculative ideas clearly require more research. Our results suggest that timing of sleep could influence which type of information babies focus on and process.

What does this mean for parents?

Due to the small size of our study, our findings about processing emotional information must be considered preliminary. However, it is clear from previous research that sleep plays an important role in early development.

Having a calm and consistent bedtime routine helps babies make the most of their learning and the fun interactions they have had during the day. Learning to read babies’ early signs of tiredness, and adjust to changing sleep schedules as they grow, can help babies enjoy the benefits of good sleep.

The post Tired and cranky: Babies who have been awake for a while are more sensitive to sad and angry faces appeared first on Child and Family Blog.