Research on father engagement is heavily focused on Western families. Western-based programs to support fathers often do so in an individualistic manner, failing to address cultures in places where collective care is common. Limited existing research on fathers’ involvement in play emphasizes the influence of income and working status on fathers’ views on play. Overall, there is very little research on fathers' perceptions of play in refugee contexts, and there is no extensive study exploring this topic in the Rohingya context. In this context of forced displacement, we ask the following research question about the Rohingya fathers' perceptions of play.
Research Question:
How do fathers perceive children’s play in both structured (Humanitarian Play Labs) as well as unstructured (home and surrounding areas) play settings in the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh?
Methodology:
In this research, we employed two different approaches to data collection:
Semi-structured interviews consisted of 25 Rohingya fathers aged between 23 and 48, all of which had one child in BRAC’s 0-6 early childhood age range. Interviews consisted of questions related to playing with child, discipline/behavior management, and child participation in Humanitarian Play Lab (HPL) programs.
Child Point-of-View Observations included 61 focal children and recorded 5-minute observations with the aim of recording experiences from the child’s point of view, and focused on ways children socialize with other children and adults.
Findings:
Results from the study suggest that fathers spend more time with children post-forced displacement allowing them to keenly observe their children’s play, their interaction with peers and play objects in the surroundings and associated behaviors, supported by observations from children’s points of view. Our findings emphasize a key concern among all fathers in the study – specific to this humanitarian context – is safety and security of children at play in the camp settings. In our research, we provide a number of recommendations for fathers’ active involvement in existing child development programs to enhance children’s socioemotional development and socialization through play.
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