The Qualitative Report 2014 Volume 19, Article 66, 1-15 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR19/keller66.pdf Relationships of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and their Fathers Terry Keller Lourdes University, Sylvania, Ohio, USA Julie Ramisch Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA Marsha Carolan Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA This phenomenological study investigated the relationships between 7 fathers and their sons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Seven major themes emerged: Shared Activities, Developmental Sensitivity, Emotional Understanding, Fighting the Label, Fatherhood Expectations, Parent Responsibility, and Fatherhood Isolation. Fathers were sensitive to their sons’ emotional needs and developmental milestones. Clinicians can help fathers to develop appropriate relationships with their children that involve shared activities. Clinicians can also assist fathers in coping with isolation and expectations regarding fatherhood, developing desired fatherhood roles, and finding appropriate shared activities with their children. Keywords: ASD, Child Development, Fatherhood, Parenting Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have a range of social difficulties, which include impairments in social interaction, communication, and repetitive and stereotyped behaviors (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [DSM-5]; American Psychological Association [APA], 2013). Researchers have demonstrated that children with ASD have more difficulties with social skills compared to children without ASD (Macintosh & Dissanayake, 2006). Specifically, communication difficulties include a lack of skills such as making appropriate comments about conversation topics (Paul, Orlovski, Marcinko, & Volkmar, 2009), making decisions about how much or how little to say in a conversation about a particular topic (Paul et al., 2009), the ability to maintain a balanced back-and-forth conversation by taking conversational turns (Jones & Schwartz, 2009; Paul et al., 2009), understanding implicit and explicit meanings of messages (Muller, Schuler, & Yates, 2008), and interpreting gestures and tone of voice (Muller et al., 2008). Theoretically, the difficulty that children with ASD have with reciprocal social interaction may interfere with the development of secure relationships with family members, and specifically, with parents. In one meta-analysis, Rutgers, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, and van Berckelaer-Onnes (2004) determined that children with ASD, as compared to children without ASD, were less often securely attached to their parents. More recent studies have confirmed that children with ASD had less secure relationships with their parents (Naber et al., 2007; Rutgers et al., 2007; van IJzendoorn et al., 2007). In a 2007 study, van IJzendoorn et al. also measured parental sensitivity and found that parents of children with ASD did not differ significantly from parents of children without ASD in terms of sensitivity. For children without ASD, more parental sensitivity was associated with more security, but for children with ASD, more sensitivity was not associated with more security (van IJzendoorn et al., 2007).