Impact of Father Involvement and Positive Parenting on Child Mental Health: Insights From a Survey of Ugandan Households

The influence of father positive parenting and involvement on children's mental health outcomes is underexplored in many sub-Saharan African countries, such as Uganda, despite research showing that fathers play a critical role in shaping their children's mental and emotional health outcomes. Most research on father involvement in parenting has been conducted in high-income countries in Western countries, and most research from Africa relies on mothers' reports. This study surveyed 236 Ugandan fathers raising children aged 6-17 years on their parenting and their children's mental health issues. Using the Mplus software, we conducted path analysis to predict child mental health symptoms (attention, internalizing, and externalizing) with father involvement and father positive parenting as independent variables while also controlling for the covariates. Results indicated that father involvement was negatively associated with attention problems (β = -0.28, p < 0.001), internalizing problems (β = -0.11, p = 0.02), and externalizing problems (β = -0.50, p < 0.001). Conversely, father's positive parenting had a small but statistically significant association with only internalizing problems (β = -0.11, p = 0.03). Further, we conducted exploratory analyses to examine whether marital status influenced these associations. We found that father involvement was negatively associated with externalizing and attention symptoms among married and unmarried fathers. Conversely, positive parenting was not significantly associated with internalizing, externalizing, or attention symptoms in either group. These findings suggest that greater father involvement may reduce behavioral and emotional issues in Ugandan children and thus emphasize the need to involve more fathers in parenting interventions.