comparative study of the impact of antenatal training care infants to fathers and couple on the fathers' participations after birth

ABSTRACT

Increasing number of working mothers and changes in viewpoints on fathers' roles in families has increased fathers' participations. Fathers' participation is his broad, positive and active participation in different stages of children's life. Women possess the main role in enhancing and limiting father's participation. Fathers and couples require training to define father's role in infant care and the significance of his role in infant's health and foundation of family. Therefore, the present study is done to determine the impact of training couples and fathers how to take care of infants on the rate of father's participation to take care of infants after birth. The study was done as a clinical trial in three groups, on 150 people who refered to health clinical centers of Medical University of Mashhad. Fathers of training group and couples of training group took part in two training sessions of infant care in weeks 35 to 37 of pregnancy. The questionnaires of role of father's training in infant care were filled by mothers in three groups and were analyzed by SPSS18 software and ANOVA with repeated measure, Bonferroni tests. Role of fathers' participation in infants care in father's training group and couple training group than control group increased significantly [P=0.003]. Training fathers and couples before birth will enhance rate of their participation in infant care