©Advance Educational Institute & Research Centre – 2013 International journal of endorsing health science research www.aeirc-edu.com Volume 1 Issue 1 July2013 51 Role of Fathers in Early Years of Child’s Life Mona Minhaz Ali Jindani & Sanober Nadeem 1. Human Development Program ,Aga Khan University Corresponding author::m.jindani14@gmail.com ABSTRACT The study focus on investigating the perceptions and practices of fathers and its impact on children’s development. It attempts to establish the effect of father’s involvement in children life. Very few studies to date could be found on this subject area. In recent days, people are more learned and want to educate their selves on how they should deal their children and at the same time best practices for fathers should also be established by researches and studies. This study was done to involvement of fathers in child care as their involvement effects socio economic development of a child. Fathers are usually preoccupied in earning bread for the family however they should play their role in child carePurposive sampling was done for the purpose of this search after which focused group discussion (FGD) were conducted on 5 different locations to address all the socio economical classes of fathers. Father of a given sample were accumulated at a single place for the purpose of the research study and interviews/discussion were conducted in presence of a note taker and a principal investigator, prior consent was taken from all the fathers before the focused group discussion. According to the study it has been proved that fathers involvement had a great influence on children development. Children were good at schools and interaction with other where father’s involvement was high. Usually, fathers are ideal for child but studies shows that paternal involvement has been low in comparison to maternal but this perception is changingwith time. The research identified that fathers are usually busy in earning bread for their family due to which they have fairly less stake in the child development however there is an increasing trend in fathers who understands the importance of their role in child care and child development and also they try to give maximum contribution in the upbringing of their children. KEYWORDS Role of fathers, Early childhood development, Parenting style, Importance of fathers, Children development ABBREVIATIONS FGD: Focus Group Discussion REC: Religious Education Center ERC: Ethical review committee. PI: Principal investigator ECD: Early childhood development BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION Early years are very important for children’s development. This phase of development starts from conception and continue till 8 years of life In these early years children develops their utmost personality by observing and learning from environment , children also develop their social, emotional, cognitive, physical skills(Flouri,2003) Parenting can be defined as the action includes many specific types of behavior that work individually and together which had a great influence on children and their outcomes. Parenting described as different types of behaviors of parents like aggressive, passive and assertive. Parenting means how parents deal with their child and how they control and guide to child, parenting effects on domains of development of children. Responsiveness and being demanding at the same time is defined as the best way of parenting by one of the author in his studies. In this era, when the parenting styles have a great influence on child’s development and also affects the later outcomes it becomes very important to manage these parenting styles and articulates its importance amongst the parent as this matter is of utmost importance that the parents especially the fathers realize their responsibilities in the nurture of their child. It was shown in study that authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles of mother’s scores had significant correlations with children's academic achievement but on the other hand it is exposed that permissive parenting style, as well as paternal authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles showed no connections with children's academic achievement (Flouri,2003) Author’s described parenting standards, behavior, care giving practices, stimulating, supportive experiences and opportunities for learning. These parenting standards help parents to know the status of child development. For example if parents read a story with pictures so this indicates stimulating and supportive parenting standards (Boechler,2003) From the last decade, parenting involvement has been an important topic for studies and it also effects on children socio emotional and cognitive development during early years. People show their interest in search about the father’s role and the significance of father’s role in children’s socio emotional, academic and cognitive development. Multiple studies now working on the involvement of fathers and exploring the area day by day and various researches are now being conducted on the subject. Studies reveal that fathers involvement in early years effects on school performance and less behavior problems in children. While reviewing various studies it was apparent that males were targeted badly by the society as 17 out of the 20 article were discussing females whereas only 3 of them were concentrating on the masculine aspect of parenting i.e. Fatherhood. Fathers should be involved in children’s lives but they give minimum time or sometimes they are totally absent, so the absence of father had a significant influence on children development. Presence of father for some time doesn’t means that father-child interactions were going well. Father should understand their role in children’s life and its effect on children development. Multiple studies pointed out that positive involvement of fathers can lead child for betterment at different stages of development. Absence of a father converted in to neglect form and children totally neglecting by father, effects of