Dads need to spend more time with kids: Research

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDMay 20 2010

According to a new study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, most Australian kids do not spend much time alone with their dads. The research shows that many kids spend as little as 30 minutes a day with their dads during the week. The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children involved nearly 4,000 people and found that mothers spent more time with the children and preferred it more than fathers.

Deputy director of the Institute Dr Matthew Gray said, “If we look at children that are eight to nine years old, on a weekday they're spending on average a bit under an hour a day with the father alone, about three-and-a-half hours with the mother alone, and about two hours with the parents together…So that's a total of six hours a day with their parents. And on weekends when you might expect fathers to be spending more time with their children they spend 10 hours with the parents - of which only one-and-a-half hours is with the father when the mother is not present.”

Dr. Gray went on to say, “About 28 per cent of fathers said they almost always enjoy time with their children compared with 40 per cent of mothers and it's important to understand why this might be…One thing is fathers might be a bit more candid in the interview. There's a pretty strong social expectation on mothers to say they really enjoy spending time with their children all of the time and fathers might be a bit more candid…But also because fathers spend less time with their children on their own, in a sense, they might be less confident, less comfortable in the role. But we know that spending time with both mother and father can be very important for children.”

Dr. Gray blames work and financial pressures as the reason behind these findings.

Institute researcher Jennifer Baxter feels that although most parents said that they enjoyed their time alone with the kids there was a difference between dads and mums. “…fathers were a little more inclined than mothers to say that they only sometimes enjoyed spending time with their children,” she said in a statement. Less than 30 percent fathers “always” or “often enjoyed their child’s company and more than 20 percent enjoyed only “sometimes” or “less often”. When mothers were asked 40 percent always enjoyed their time with the kids while 10 percent sometimes did.

However Dr. Gray emphasized that with changing times, attitudes of modern fathers towards their kids was changing and all was not bad. “I think about my father and my friends' fathers; the way they spend time with their children is quite different to what I spend with my children and other people of similar age. So fathers are definitely playing a greater role in their children's lives,” Dr Gray said.