Parenting self-efficacy as a central mechanism of father involvement in raising children with autism spectrum disorder

The number of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continues to increase. This condition makes fathers need to be more involved in caring for children with ASD. Parenting of fathers with ASD children has an important impact on the child’s development and on the mental well-being of the mother. Unfortunately, research on parenting children with ASD is still dominated by the mother’s perspective. This necessitates a father’s parenting model that is specific to the context of children with ASD to understand what makes fathers more willing to be involved in caring for children with ASD. This research aims to explore the factors that trigger fathers to be involved in parenting children with ASD. This research used a quantitative approach with a total of 370 respondents. This study has inclusion criteria for fathers with ASD children, whether adopted, step, or biological children, married, living with children and partner, and domiciled in Indonesia. 6 measuring instruments are used: Father Involvement Scale, Fathering Efficacy Scale, The Role of Father Questionnaire, The Parental Support Questionnaire, Brief RCOPE, and The Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire. Data analysis uses the PLS-SEM approach. The results showed that fathers’ involvement in parenting was associated with partner support, acceptance, and positive religious coping, and that these influences were fully mediated by fathers’ parenting self-efficacy. The father’s attitude towards the child fails in mediating partner support, acceptance, and positive religious coping. The results of this study, in the context of parenting children with ASD, indicate that fathers’ feeling of being able to care for their children was associated with partner support, fathers’ acceptance of children, and positive religious coping. The findings suggest that existing father care models may not be fully applicable to fathers of children with ASD, highlighting the need for model refinement or the development of a context-specific framework.