The Role of the Father in the Light of Secondary School Graduates from the Siedlce Diocese

Abstract

The problems of fatherhood have become today a matter of interest for many learned areas and disciplines. The role of meaning of the father in a family system is also one of the basic aspects of the studies on the family. This publication if an evidence of that interest. It consists of two principal parts: theoretical and empirical. The theoretical part discusses the problems of the biblical and theological understanding of fatherhood as well as the contemporary issues of fatherhood. The second part presents a strategy of research and an quantitative analysis of the findings. The studies use the method of psychological questionnaire. Their goal was to examine the role of the father in a family system. Particular questions dealt with the following issues: religiousness that secondary school graduates declared, interpersonal relations with fathers, assessment of the father's personality (positive and negative), an image of the ideal father, father's participation in the process of upbringing, father's influence on his children's religious formation, father-mother relationship, children's respect towards their father, and an image of the father inherited in childhood.

The whole of the study has been crowned with a summary, conclusions, and bibliography.

It is worth adding that the studies provided a complete answer to the questions in the questionnaire. They showed an image of the father in the contemporary Polish family according to secondary school leavers. The studies' value resides also in this that they covered a very numerous group (867 persons).