Korean Fathers’ Value of Children and Their Patterns of Parenting Behavior: A Cluster Analysis

Abstract

Studies concerning fathering have rarely examined the relationships between how fathers value their children and their parenting behaviors. The purpose of this study was to identify Korean fathers’ value of children and patterns of parenting behavior through cluster analysis. Data from 1,520 fathers who participated in the 2013 Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) were subjected to a two-step cluster analysis using the k-means algorithm for clustering fathers’ value of children and their parenting behaviors. The results indicated three clusters: “only valued emotionally,” “highly involved,” and “detached.” Furthermore, when the influencing factors dividing clusters 2 and 3 were explored, the fathers’ psychological characteristics, such as high parenting stress, depression and low self-esteem, in addition to their sociodemographic factors, increased the likelihood of being assigned to the “detached” cluster. The significance of this study lies in the clustering of fathers using their value of children and parenting behaviors, which is an approach that had not been studied previously. Moreover, this study is valuable as it identifies the relative influence of fathers’ psychological characteristics that affected the classification of clusters.