Abstract
M.A. (Clinical Social Work)
This research involves exploring how middle childhood boys at a primary school experience
the phenomenon of growing up with an absent father both functionally and psychosocially.
The absent father being defined as a living father who does not live with his son and has
chosen to be uninvolved in a financial, physical, emotional or spiritual way and has little
contact with his son.
The goal of the study was to investigate the effect of absent fathers on middle childhood boys
and to gain an understanding of how they view the absence of a father in their lives. The
objectives included exploring the experience of the boys in growing up with an absent father,
to determine the boy’s perception of how their father’s absence has impacted on their lives, as
well as to make recommendations for social work and other social service practitioners.
A qualitative approach was selected for this study with a view to allowing participants to give
rich descriptions of their individual experiences of growing up with an absent father. It is an
exploratory study, informed by phenomenology. Exploratory, as it necessitated gaining
insight into a situation and phenomenological as it entailed describing the participants
experience of their life story.
The research population for this study was defined as all boys in Grade Seven at the primary
school. The boys were aged between twelve and thirteen. Purposive sampling was used as it
allowed the researcher to select the participants based on necessary and relevant criteria. Five
participants were selected as the researcher believed that it would give a sufficient overview
of the phenomenon being researched and would reach data saturation.
The interviews were all started with the same request namely, “Tell me about your
relationship with your father?” Thereafter a semi-structured interview schedule was used as a
backup tool when relevant questions needed to be asked. Participants were prepared for the
interviews prior to the commencement of the study. Data was analysed according to a
phenomenological method namely, Familiarisation; Immersion/Bracketing; Inducing
Themes; Coding; Elaboration and Interpretation. These procedures were followed until a full
description of the participants’ experience of absent fathers was disclosed.
Four themes namely, emotions, loss, self-esteem and the single mother were identified ...