摘要： Due to the historical perception of the father’s role solely as family breadwinner and moral support to the mother the role of the father in the child’s life has not been systematically researched until the 80’s of the 20th century. The recognition that fathers are involved with children in varying degrees and in different ways, and that the way and the amount of their involvement in child care are linked with children’s cognitive abilities and socio-emotional adjustment, has led to the recognition of the importance of the research in that domain. Many researches have been conducted in this domain in the past thirty years, and the results indicate a systematic increase of the father’s functional involvement in child care over time (Biller, 1993; Parke, 1996; Pleck, 1997; Clark & O’Brien, 2004; Gray & Anderson, 2012). However, in 1997 Palkovitz proposed extending the concept of fathers’ involvement, as fathers in the life of their children are involved not only across the functional, but also across the affective and cognitive level. Through their behavior fathers provide a sense of security and love to children, and they are aware of the child’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs, and knowingly plan strategies for their satisfaction. Considering the above mentioned, the aim of conducted research was to determine the extent to which fathers in Northwestern Croatia (N = 156) are involved in different aspects of care for preschool children: the functional aspect, which is only partially researched in Croatia, but also emotional and cognitive aspects which are poorly represented on a global scale research. Fathers provided their estimates on scales of functional, emotional and cognitive involvement. Research results show that fathers are highly involved in all three domains of child care. In the domain of functional involvement fathers are equally involved in care, play, daily and occasional childcare obligations and are largely intrinsically motivated to perform these activities. Also, most fathers are extremely prone to express ing positive emotions in relationship with the child, express great sensitivity to the child’s emotions, think about the various issues of child welfare on a regular basis and plan strategies for their realization.
