Abstract
This chapter will review the literature on the psychological, social, and emotional preparations that fathers undergo as they prepare to parent a new infant. Risk and resilience factors associated with fathers’ emotional connection to the fetus and psychological adaptation during the perinatal period will be examined. Social and cultural narratives about the importance of early fathering and new data challenging these narratives will be presented. The state of the science of early fathering will be described with implications for clinical work with fathers.
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Dayton, C.J., Malone, J.C., Brown, S. (2020). Pathways to Parenting: The Emotional Journeys of Fathers as They Prepare to Parent a New Infant. In: Fitzgerald, H.E., von Klitzing, K., Cabrera, N.J., Scarano de Mendonça, J., Skjøthaug, T. (eds) Handbook of Fathers and Child Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51027-5_12
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