Greater father involvement was negatively associated with attention, internalizing, and externalizing problems in Ugandan children, suggesting that father involvement may reduce behavioral and emotional issues and emphasizing the need to involve more fathers in parenting interventions.
Father involvement was negatively associated with attention problems in Ugandan children.
Father involvement was negatively associated with internalizing problems in Ugandan children.
Father involvement was negatively associated with externalizing problems in Ugandan children, with the strongest effect observed among the three mental health outcomes.
Father positive parenting was significantly associated with internalizing problems only, with a small effect size.
Exploratory analyses found that father involvement was negatively associated with externalizing and attention symptoms among both married and unmarried fathers.
Most prior research on father involvement in parenting has been conducted in high-income Western countries, and most African research relies on mothers' reports, leaving a gap for father-reported data in sub-Saharan Africa.
This research suggests that how involved fathers are in their children's lives is linked to better mental health outcomes for children in Uganda. The study surveyed 236 Ugandan fathers about their parenting behaviors and their children's mental health, finding that greater father involvement was associated with fewer attention problems, fewer internalizing problems (such as anxiety or depression-like symptoms), and fewer externalizing problems (such as aggression or rule-breaking behaviors). The strongest association was with externalizing behavior, where more involved fathers had children with notably fewer behavioral problems. The study also found that using positive parenting techniques (such as warmth and encouragement) had a small but statistically significant link to fewer internalizing problems, but this effect did not hold up when the researchers looked separately at married and unmarried fathers. Father involvement, by contrast, remained consistently linked to fewer attention and externalizing problems regardless of whether the father was married or not. This suggests that the quantity and quality of father engagement may matter more than specific positive parenting techniques alone, at least in this context. This research matters because most studies on fatherhood and child development come from wealthy Western countries, and studies from Africa have largely relied on mothers describing father behavior rather than asking fathers directly. This study adds an important perspective by surveying Ugandan fathers themselves. The findings suggest that efforts to improve children's mental health in Uganda and similar settings should actively include fathers, not just mothers, in parenting programs and interventions.
Asiimwe R, Welch T, Dwanyen L, Kasujja R, Mugumya F, Blow A, et al.. (2026). Impact of Father Involvement and Positive Parenting on Child Mental Health: Insights From a Survey of Ugandan Households.. Family process. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.70144