Enhancing father involvement of earthquake-affected fathers: a qualitative analysis

This study identifies the factors influencing father involvement in container cities following the February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye and examines the current state of father involvement from a sociological perspective. Father involvement improves children's cognitive, social and emotional development as well as academic success. However, earthquakes can seriously disturb this. Previous studies have indicated that the father-child relationship transforms after disasters such as earthquakes. This study analyzes, within "father involvement" framework, how father-child relations differs in families forced to set up new life-world in container cities. The analysis was grounded in the phenomenological sociology tradition, which interprets father involvement as a lived sociological phenomenon embedded in everyday experiences. The study utilizes Van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Data collected from 23 earthquake-affected fathers (<i>N</i> = 23), using a semi-structured interview, a purposive sampling technique, and analyzed using MAXQDA. The factors affecting father involvement were thematized as follows: the child's social and psychological well-being, changes in emotional state, economic deterioration; search for meaning of life, and transformations in relationships with the spouse and the surrounding environment. Father involvement is categorized into three dimensions: responsibility, interaction, and communication. Father involvement is context-dependent, and the factors influencing it differ post-earthquake compared with the existing literature. The earthquake motivated fathers to prioritize their children, highlighting the importance of father involvement.