Paternal Separation Anxiety: Relationships With Parenting Stress, Child-Rearing Attitudes, and Maternal Anxieties

Abstract

Employed mothers of young children worry about the effects of daily separation on their children Do fathers have similar anxieties? Because fathers are expected to leave the home and go to work, psychologists have not studied fathers' concerns about daily separation from their babies and preschool children In this study, we investigated fathers' and mothers' separation anxiety and the relationships between separation anxiety and family and child-care characteristics The sample included 589 married couples from a larger study of families and center-based child care Data were collected through in-home and center visits Fathers and mothers had similar levels of Separation Anxiety However, fathers reported slightly higher Concern for the Child, and mothers reported higher Employment Concerns Fathers' perceptions of their wives' anxieties were higher by half a standard deviation compared with mothers' reports Fathers' and mothers self-reported separation anxieties were modestly correlated Paternal separation anxiety was most strongly associated with fathers' perceptions of their wives' separation concerns, not with mothers' reported anxieties, which suggested ego defensiveness and projection