Summary Report - pdf - Department of Families, Housing ...

Primary carers of children who did not live in the samehousehold with one or both of their parents were alsoasked their opinion about how involved the mother orthe father living elsewhere should be in the child’s life.The answers are summarised in Figure 13 below, brokendown by whether the mother or the father of the childwas living somewhere else. While some primary carers didnot think that the parent living elsewhere should be at allinvolved in the child’s life—this is true for 17.2 per cent ofcases where the mother of the child was living elsewhereand 12.8 per cent of cases where the father was livingelsewhere—more than half of primary carers would havepreferred the parent to be more involved in the child’s life.The information on the actual and desired involvement ofparents living away from their children can be comparedto see whether there was a generally agreed upon ’right’level of parental involvement. In the case of fathers livingelsewhere 11 , where a father had contact with the child atleast twice a week, most primary carers (62.5 per cent)indicated that the level of the father’s involvement wasabout right, but a further one-third of primary carersdesired more involvement from the father (Table 20).Where the father living elsewhere saw the child less often,the majority of primary carers desired more involvement.Interestingly, in the cases where the father was not at all incontact with the child, the primary carers’ responses werealmost evenly split between wishing for more involvementfrom the father (47.5 per cent) and wishing for noinvolvement at all (49.2 per cent).Figure 13: Primary carer’s attitude regarding involvement of the parent living elsewhere: ‘How involved should the parentbe in the child’s life?’Table 20: Comparison of actual and desired contact with the child’s father living elsewhere, per centFrequency of father’scontact with the childEvery day to two timesper week (n=96)Once per week to oncea fortnight (n=66)Once a month to oncea year (n=74)Primary carer’s desired level of the father’s involvementMore About right Less Not at all Total33.3 62.5 3.1 1.0 100.066.7 28.8 4.5 0.0 100.073.0 12.2 5.4 9.5 100.0Not at all (n=61) 47.5 3.3 0.0 49.2 100.011 The sample numbers were too small to conduct this analysis for mothers living elsewhere.32 Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children | Key Summary Report from Wave 3