Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Astronautica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actaastro Being a father during the space career: Retired cosmonauts' involvement Phyllis J. Johnson a,* , Peter Suedfeld b , Vadim I. Gushin c a Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, 6303 NW Marine Drive, V6T 1Z1 Vancouver, BC, Canada b Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, V6T 1Z4 Vancouver, BC, Canada c The Institute of Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, Khoroshevskoye Shosse 76A, Moscow, Russia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Cosmonauts Father involvement Family Space career ABSTRACT The space career requires numerous absences from the cosmonaut's family during training and spaceflight. Such absences mean missing important milestones, events, and celebrations in the lives of their children. This study assesses retired cosmonauts' views of actual and desired involvement with their children during their spaceflight career. The Father Involvement Scale (adapted from Finley & Schwartz, 2004; Hawkins et al., 2002), translated into Russian, was answered by 17 retired cosmonauts. The 20 domains in the scale included 10 Expressive (e.g., intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual development; sharing activities and interests) and 10 Instrumental (e.g., providing income, being protective, discipline, school/homework, and developing responsibility, in- dependence, and competence). The cosmonauts' ratings of actual involvement with their children's lives was between Sometimes involved and Often involved (M = 3.66, SD = 0.42). None of the cosmonauts indicated Never involved for any of the Expressive domains or for seven of the ten Instrumental domains. Within the Expressive domains, the majority of cosmonauts said they were “often” involved in their child's spiritual development and in sharing activities/interests. Within the Instrumental domains, they were “often” involved in discipline and “always” involved in providing income. The areas in which they wished they had been “much more involved” than they had been were Expressive, rather than Instrumental: intellectual, spiritual, and physical development; sharing activities/interests, and companionship. This is the first study to measure retrospective assessments of father involvement during spaceflight careers. Space agencies should consider how Family Support personnel can enhance the parental involvement of future spacefarers. 1. Introduction Fathers may be away from their family for many reasons – tem- porary work assignments, relocation or emigration pending reunion elsewhere, missions for government, NGOs, or military service, in- carceration, marital divorce or separation, and so on [1]. Although much of the research on father absence still focuses on how such ab- sences affect the family, and especially children [e.g. [2–4], in recent years there has been increasing attention paid to “fathering”. This in- cludes not only the absent parent's behavior toward the family, but also to his own feelings of involvement despite physical distance. Conceptualizations of fathers being involved with their children have expanded beyond the traditional role of providing income, and have also moved from a primary focus on the amount of time spent with children [5]. One reason the definition and measurement of father in- volvement expanded beyond the time spent in direct interaction is the recognition that many absent fathers do remain involved economically, cognitively, spiritually, and psychologically in their child's life [6,7]. Current approaches include direct and indirect interactions with chil- dren, in domains encompassing a range of traditional and expanding roles of fathers [6–11]. Researchers have realized that for fathers who are absent from their child's life due to work-related travel and extensive work hours, maintaining the father identity – in terms of self-concept, importance, cross-situational awareness, and commitment [12] – may be especially problematic. Archival data of early astronauts indicate that family (children, spouse, and other relatives) were often mentioned in their autobiographical writings, indicating that they were thought about during the absences and recognized for the support they provided during the astronaut's career. Specific themes identified by Johnson [6] and of relevance to this paper are: 1) family events were missed, 2) family was thought about routinely during spaceflight, and 3) the space career affected marriage and family. Specifically, the astronauts' in- tensive training meant missed family events, and missing events be- came the routine not the exception. Retired astronauts thought it im- portant to spend time with their adult children to make up for time and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2018.05.028 Received 18 February 2018; Received in revised form 17 March 2018; Accepted 13 May 2018 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: phyllis.johnson@ubc.ca (P.J. Johnson), psuedfeld@psych.ubc.ca (P. Suedfeld), vgushin.57@mail.ru (V.I. Gushin). Acta Astronautica 149 (2018) 106–110 Available online 15 May 2018 0094-5765/ © 2018 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T