Examining the perception of fathers, who have a preschool child, about their paternity roles, and the effect of the support they get from their wives on social skill levels of their children

The purpose of this study wasto examine the perception of the fathers, who have a preschool child, about their paternity roles, and the effect of the support they got from their wives on the social skills of their children. Within this scope; The universe of the research was comprised of 48-60 month children who study at nursery schools in Cankaya, Mamak, Altindag, Yenimahalle, Etimesgut, Sincan and Kecioren central districts of Ankara and official independent preschools during 2012- 2013 school year, and their fathers. 378 numbers of subjects at the least were determined from the universe by means of random sampling method. In this context 533 children and their fathers formed the sample of the research. In order to determine the demographic qualities of the fathers and children in the research ?General Information Form?, to measure the perception of the fathers about paternity role, ?Paternity Role Perception Scale?, to measure the support that the fathers obtained from their wives, ?Spouse Support Scale?, and to measure the social skills of the children, ?Social Skills Scale? were used. The data obtained were analysed with T test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for independent samples according to the number of category of independent variables in SPSS 20 packet programme, Bonferroni test was used to examine the group differences in the significant differences. The relations between the variables were analysed with Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient. In the statistics made 0,05 was chosen as a significance level. In consequence of the research, it was determined that the perceptions of the fathers about the paternity role showed a significant difference according to the vi variables of father?s age, his state of education, begetting age for the first time in comparison to the age of mother, her state of education and occupation (p<0,05); however, the support that the fathers obtained from their wives statistically showed a significant difference by the variables of educational status of the mother, occupation and educational status of the father (p<0,05). It was detected that the social skills of the children statistically displayed a significant difference in accordance with the gender of the child, age, continuation process for preschool educational institution, educational status of the mother and her occupation (p<0,05). Moreover, in the research it was seen that there was a positive and significant relation between the support the fathers obtained from their wives and the perception of the fathers about the paternity roles, and the social skills of their children (p<0,05); however, there was a positive, significant and low relation between the estimating dimension of wife support scale of the fathers and social cooperation from the social skills of their children (p<0,05). Key words: paternity role perception, spouse support, social support, social skill, preschool education.