FATHERHOOD AS A SYSTEMIC PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL EVENT

Till now the psychology of fatherhood is a fragmentarily studied sphere of scientific interests of specialists in various fields of knowledge, emphasizing the role of the father in the family.  Of particular importance are the ideas about fatherhood that have developed in society [1].  The media portrays the father either as a villain or as a hero, while the view on him is extremely simplified.  The media does not consider the true reasons and motivations of the fathers’ behavior, and they practically do not raise the issue of problems faced by fathers in the process of child upbringing, which in turn helps spread the opinion that fathers are not able to perform educational tasks effectively.  Problems arising from fathers in the process of raising children lead to the formation of a vacuum in the child’s psyche, as a result of which he develops a negative image of the father, who does not have a significant role in the upbringing of children, and a distorted conception of fatherhood [2].  R.W.  Ovcharova, Yu.A.  Tokarev attempted to analyze the realization of the functions of parenthood, in particular fatherhood, at the level of educational activities [3].  It is fatherhood, and its psychological and pedagogical component, that is of great scientific interest for understanding the father’s contribution to the development of the child’s personality through the educational practice that he implements [4].

In general, the analysis of the problem of raising a child by his father showed a number of difficulties:

A) the complexity of the object and the subject of research, namely fatherhood is a systematic psychological and pedagogical phenomenon associated with the implementation of a special kind of activity – the education of the child, determined by the individual characteristics of the child.  Empirically, fatherhood, as a phenomenon connected with the upbringing of a child, seems to be poorly researched, both in domestic and foreign psychology, and therefore contains limited specific ideas related to the assessment of the father’s educational practices;  B) Insufficiency of psychodiagnostic tools that would allow to assess the determinants of the father’s educational activity, the system of mediated actions and operations of the father related to the upbringing of the child, the effectiveness of educational activities.

So, we can distinguish a number of significant contradictions between:

• the importance of the role of the father in the development of the child and the lack of learning of the father’s educational practice, which is a system of parental attitudes, knowledge and behavior of the parent;
• the society’s need for knowledge about the essence of the father’s educational activities that convey the social experience to the child and the availability of objective information about the connection between the father’s upbringing and the level of the child’s social development;
• knowledge about the functions of the family and parents and their real fulfillment by the father;
• the active educational practice of the father and the real result of her, related to the impact of the father on the child;
• difficulties of family psychologists in the provision of assistance to fathers, associated with effective educational impact and developing influence and the absence of specific models of child upbringing;
• the urgent need to have a holistic view of fatherhood as a systemic psychological and pedagogical phenomenon and fragmentation and fragmentation of knowledge about this phenomenon.

Solving this problem and overcoming the above difficulties and contradictions is possible when applying the following research principles:

1. The principle of the system approach, which allows us to treat fatherhood as a systemic psychological and pedagogical phenomenon that becomes, changes, develops and manifests itself in a special process for raising a child.

2. The principle of subjectivity, providing an understanding of the father as a subject of the child’s upbringing, showing creative activity in mastering the parental experience.

The systematic approach allows us to objectively understand and describe microstructures, to see the specifics of parenting a child.  We can assume that there are certain patterns in the implementation of child upbringing due to compliance with the generally accepted canons of its implementation.  Hence the need for systematic study and description of the manifestation of these patterns in specific actions and operations.  When referring to literature on the problems of raising a child in the family, a paradoxical situation is revealed.  Phenomenological and methodological aspects of upbringing are well covered, which can not be said of the systemic approach in the child’s upbringing by the father.  It is important to understand that the process of education is a very specific phenomenon, the potential of which can be directed not only at creation but also at the destruction of the person, especially if it is a parent who is not guided by concrete knowledge and behaves ambiguously [5].  Developing and bringing up the function of education begins to perform only when it becomes for the father conscious and personally significant [6].  The work on awareness and mastery of each of the elements of upbringing and its structure as a whole actualizes the father’s own subjective capabilities.

Education of the child by the father, ensuring the assimilation of social experience, has a significant specificity, which must be specified when detailing the structure of the model of father’s interaction with the child.  A systematic approach to the study of the child’s upbringing by the father is an integration of two methodological directions that allow profound analysis and structuring of the phenomenon under study.

According to the conceptual positions of the systems approach, fatherhood is considered by us as a complex personal formation that is not reducible to the sum of its constituent parts, having a hierarchical structure in which structural components and their functions are distinguished.  Among the set of components of fatherhood, the educational position of the father is important, as the mechanism of interaction with the child and the factor of the realization of fatherhood.

Returning to the problem of the possible use of a systematic approach to the study of the child’s upbringing by the father, it should be noted that the source of the subject’s activity is the motivational-needing sphere, i.e.  Its source is inside the subject.  The motivational-orienting link has a deep structure that determines the content of the executive and control-evaluation unit.  Full-fledged performance implies the implementation of all its components.  The described order is a system where each successive element is connected with the previous one and has the nature of conditioning [7].

Investigating the motivation of behavior in connection with the problem of the formation of personality, domestic psychologists distinguish in it an active-effective and potential area [8].  Relations between them in the course of personality development are changing.  The motive is not just one of the “constituent” activities of a person.  He acts as a component of a complex system – the motivational sphere of the individual.  In the process of personality development, their differentiation and integration takes place, the transformation of some into others or the suppression of some by others;  On the basis of some motives others are formed, there are contradictions between different motives (the struggle of motives), mutual strengthening or weakening.

So, the consideration of the child’s upbringing by the father as a systemic psychological and pedagogical phenomenon made it possible to single out a number of provisions:

- Specific human interaction is always committed together with other people, therefore all human activity is impregnated with sociality.  Proceeding from theoretical concepts, fatherhood must be considered as a system of adult influences on the child: the father can’t be thought alone, he is always given as an element of interaction, i.e.  Fatherhood is a system in the structure of father-child interaction;

- Fatherhood can be represented as a special kind of activity, namely, educational activity, considering the three main links of its structure: motivationally-orientational, executive and control-appraisal;

- It is expedient to analyze the educational activity of the father from the point of view of the system-activity theory, since without the knowledge of the structure of activity it is impossible to construct conceptual models of the father’s educational activity.

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7. Lishin OV Pedagogical psychology of education.  – Moscow: Institute of Practical Psychology, 1997. – 310 p.
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