An increasing effort by policymakers, in Portugal, regarding parenthood, e.g., giving men more time at home after childbirth, has been made to promote fathers spending more time and be more involved in childcare. The underlying notion is that parenting is central for children’s behavioral, social and cognitive outcomes, in infancy and beyond. For decades research was centered on motherhood, and the early studies on fathers focused mainly on his presence or absence from children’s lives, and then on the amount of time they spent with them (Shwalb, Shawalb & Lamb, 2013). Recently several authors have stated the importance of understanding the quality of this involvement to better comprehend father’s impact on children’s development. For e.g., mothers still spend more time with children compared to fathers, even when working full-time (Johnson, et al. 2013, Monteiro et al., 2010). Studies have also reported that socio-demographic variables as father’s educational level and employment status should be taken into count. Low quality jobs might affect father– child relationship by reducing their chances of being available and engaged in children activities. Exhausted or stressed parents might adopt a more typical hierarchical father – child interactions, or alternatively a more permissive or uninvolved style of parenting (e.g., Laursen & Collins, 2009). The aims of the study were to characterize father’s involvement in a sample of 465 Portuguese bi-parental families, with pre-school age children, and test if father’s education and working hours moderated the relation between father’s parenting style and his involvement in care and socialization activities. All participants were couples, either married or cohabiting. Fathers mean age was 37.14 (SD = 5.68), and his Educational level was on mean 12.50 years (SD = 3.64). Both parents were employed fulltime; with fathers working on average 41.84 (SD = 6.24). All children attended day-care in Lisbon. Mothers reported on fathers involvement using the Parental Involvement: Care and Socialization Activities scale (Monteiro et al., 2008) and fathers described their own parenting styles using the short version of Parenting Practices Questionnaire (Robinson, et al., 2001; Pedro et al., 2015). Considering the OLS multiple regressions for father involvement, all models attained a significant amount of explained variance, mostly because of Father’s education and working hours. Associations between father’s involvement (except for Direct Care) and father’s Authoritative style were found. An interaction effect with father’s Authoritative style and both father’s education and working hours in father’s involvement was found. For fathers with lower education, having an Authoritative style results in higher involvement in Direct Care and Teaching/Discipline activities. Father’s with high working hours, with an Authoritative parenting leads to more fathers’ involvement in more traditional domains like Play and Teaching/Discipline. Given the roles fathers can assume in children’s lives it’s important to understand the mechanisms thought which they participate and get involved, but also try to identify which factors are more important in explaining fathering differences so that we can promote father involvement.

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Parenting styles,father involvement,working hours,education.