This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of parenting from men’s perspective, in particularly positive and negative parenting by analyzing: Father’s beliefs about his role as a father, his sense of competence, as well as his relative involvement in care and socialization activities related to the child. Father’s education and working hours were controlled for. Participants were 238 nuclear families. Father’s age ranged from 27 to 59 years (M = 37.86, SD = 5.82), 64.7% of the fathers had primary to high school education and 35.3% a University degree (M = 12.97, SD = 3.47), and 88.7% worked full time (M = 41.37, SD = 6.24 hours per week). Children were between the ages 2 and 6 years (M = 54.80, SD = 10.82), 114 were girls. Instruments/Procedure: Mothers answered a sociodemographic questionnaire. Both parents independently completed the Parental Involvement questionnaire: Care and Socialization Activities (Monteiro et al., 2008) assessing the father’s relative participation to the mother in 5 domains. An aggregated measure was computed by averaging fathers’ and mothers’ reports. Fathers also completed the: What Is a Father? questionnaire (WIAF; Schoppe, 2001; Monteiro et al., 2015), referring to the traditional and non-tradition beliefs about the role of the father; The Sense of Competence Scale (Johnston & Mash, 1989; Ferreira et al., 2011), assessing father’s perceptions of their parental competence; Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (Robinson et al., 2001; Pedro et al., 2015) measuring their parenting styles and practices. Results: No significant effects were found for child’s sex or age. A multiple hierarchical regression analysis (Table 1) showed that the total variance explained by the predictors (sociodemographic, beliefs, involvement) reached a statistically significant effect for Positive Parenting [F(8, 229) = 6.01; p < .001, R2a = .15) and Negative Parenting [F(8, 229) = 4.75; p < .001, R2a = .11]. For Positive Parenting, Beliefs about the Role of Father (b = .25, p < .001) and Sense of Efficacy (b = .16, p = .01) were significant predictors. For Negative Parenting only the Sense of Satisfaction was a significant predictor (b = -.33, p < .001). Interactions between beliefs about the Role of the Father and Involvement will be explored. Results will be discussed in terms of the different contributions of fathers’ beliefs and involvement for the quality of parenting (positive and negative).

--

• Psicologia - Ciências Sociais