A Systematic Review of the Effective Factors in Father’s Adaptation

Abstract

Background: A father’s adaptation will facilitate the transition into fatherhood and strengthen the bonding and attachment between the father and his children. Objectives: The aim of this review article determined the effective factors in the father’s adaptation. Methods: The present study has been developed based on the PRISMA checklist. We conducted this review using Persian databases (Magiran, Iran Medex, Iran Doc, SID and Google Scholar) for Persian relevant literature and English databases (ISI Web of Science, MEDLINE, CINAHL, HMIC, Child Data, NCJRS, HSRProj, IBSS) for English relevant literature. To search in each electronic database, the following terms were used: “Father”, “Paternal Behaviors”, “Behavior”, “Paternal”, “Father-Child Relationship”, “Father-Child Relation”, “Adaptation”, “Care”, and “Child”. Two reviewers assessed the quality of the included studies. Inclusion criteria included: focused on fatherhood and father’s adaptation, they were scientific papers with the quantitative or qualitative method, providing appropriate and suitable information about effective factors on the father’s adaptation of healthy children, and published in a scientific and high-quality scholarly journal. All relevant literature that was published between August 1990 and September 2017 were included. Results: The 21 studies were included in the current systematic review from an initial search of 87 records. The results can be divided into 3 general groups of effective factors in the father’s adaptation, including: paternal factors, child factors, and health care service factors. Conclusion: Findings of this study showed a wide range of effective factors such as age, occupation, educational level, satisfaction with marriage, antenatal education classes, care providers support, and child gender in father’s adaptation. It is recommended that future researches should be focused toward need-based interventions to improve father’s adaptation.