Father involvement in separated families

According to literature there has been a focus change in family dynamics studies (Lamb, 2010) which determined more attention on the triadic relation studies (Fivaz-Depeursinge, Corboz-Warnery, 1999), as well as McHale showed in his studies about coparenting has shown (1995). Coparenting refers to coordination processes between parents in care, developmental task and children education (McHale et al., 2000). Conflict and cooperation levels in coparenting relationships have significant consequences on the father’s involvement, especially in divorce cases in which the male parent doesn’t live with his children (Wood & Covington, 2014). Father involvement was defined by Lamb (1987) as consisting of three dimensions: interaction, accessibility and responsibility, which have crucial consequences on children’s wellbeing (Adamsons & Johnson, 2013). Many couples have found ways to maintain positive co-parenting relationships after the end of their love story, others did not. The dissolution of these relationships is often characterized by tension, which undermines parents’ ability to engage in positive co-parenting (Holcomb et al., 2015). Our aim is to explore the fathers’ involvement in divorce situations. This study is based on a sample of 9 separated fathers (M=43.75 years) that have applied a family mediation intervention. We used the Rapid Marital Interaction Coding System (RMICS) (Heyman & Vivian, 2000 adapted for the present study) that is a microanalytic system, based on event sampling used to tap nonverbal behaviors. We calculate Student’s t-distribution to estimate the mean of a normally distributed population in our small sample. Results showed that fathers diverge in significative way in some dimensions. In particular, working on indicators like Hostility (M=24.05; p=.017) and Humour (M=0.93; p=.010) could promote a greater father involvement. These data could be interesting for family mediation intervention with separated families.