Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 4 · Licensed source edition
Fatherhood among healthcare workers: perceived work–family conflict and its influential factors during the COVID-19 pandemic: cross-sectional and exploratory longitudinal findings from the VOICE study
Originally published 2026-06-08 · Frontiers in Public Health
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1782679 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Relevant to decisions about including fathers explicitly in crisis-related family support; the original evidence concerns 2844 fathers across four survey waves, comparison mothers and childless men, and a 188-father longitudinal subsample.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Respect
Are fathers' caregiving pressures visible in workplace decisions?
This reading brings fathers' caregiving roles, institutional trust and conflict during a healthcare crisis into the respect pathway. The repeated cross-sectional and exploratory longitudinal healthcare study offers a specific workplace lens on how employment and family life meet.
Study context
2844 fathers across four survey waves, comparison mothers and childless men, and a 188-father longitudinal subsample
Age / stage: Working fathers; children in household considered
Read with three questions
- How did the researchers define and assess work-family conflict among fathers and comparison groups?
- What does the study design allow us to conclude about the distinction between overlapping cross-sectional samples and the longitudinal subsample?
- What would need to be checked before adopting including fathers explicitly in crisis-related family support?
Keep the limits in view
Overlapping samples, observational modeling and a small longitudinal subgroup constrain causal claims and interpretation of change over time.
The text below is the original article’s licensed repository edition. Its wording is not rewritten. Use the Paper Agent beside the text to locate evidence; open the source for figures, tables and complete context.
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Follow the original.
Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Sabine Mogwitz; Jona Körber; Lucia Jerg-Bretzke; Christian Albus; Andreas M. Baranowski; Petra Beschoner; Yesim Erim; Franziska Geiser; Eva Morawa; Susann Steudte-Schmiedgen; Gloria-Beatrice Wintermann; Kerstin Weidner (2026). Fatherhood among healthcare workers: perceived work–family conflict and its influential factors during the COVID-19 pandemic: cross-sectional and exploratory longitudinal findings from the VOICE study Frontiers in Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1782679
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.