ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial and Affective Domain in Home Language Development and Maintenance Research Volume IIView all 18 articles
Fathers' Wellbeing, Self-Efficacy, and Reading Engagement with Children
Provisionally accepted
- 1Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- 2Univerza v Ljubljani, Ljubljana, Slovenia
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Father involvement benefits the development and wellbeing of children, and yet, the wellbeing of fathers is rarely considered, as is its relationship with positive engagement activities. The purpose of this work is to address the wellbeing of fathers and its links with fathering self-efficacy and positive engagement with children through father-child home reading. Responses to an online questionnaire consisting of the validated Fathering Self-Efficacy Scale (FSES), the developed Being Well in Life and Work scale (BWLW), and two scales on reading beliefs and engagement in literacy-development with children, were completed by 122 fathers. Fathering self-efficacy was associated significantly with father wellbeing through the self-efficacy aspects of positive engagement and family provision, and the sense of family provision was associated with engagement in literacy activities. Wellbeing levels were relatively high among fathers were at 75% of the scale, and results suggest that opportunities for father self-efficacy through social connectedness and positive engagement can support their wellbeing, while fostering father self-efficacy in family provision, along with father-targeted resources, can support their engagement in their children's literacy development.
Keywords: Father, Home reading, literacy, Multicultural, Positive engagement, scale, self-efficacy, wellbeing
Received: 23 Oct 2025; Accepted: 12 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Habak, Dillon, Gallagher and Saqr. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Claudine Habak
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