The article presents the results of an empirical study of the image of the ideal father in men with children. The father image recorded ideas about the nature of fatherhood, and it contains normative elements indicating the purpose of the father, the samples of the personality that should be imitated. The main purpose of the ideal father image is to create a model that regulates the implementation of men’s parental role. The data obtained as a result of our research indicate that the study group ideal father image is based on a new model of father-hood — “modern”, or “responsible”, fatherhood. The key characteristics of such an image are being smart and responsible. Such personal properties as rigidity, power and trustworthiness are the least relevant to the image of the ideal father in the eyes of men. We have found that the pattern of one’s own father has an impact on shaping perceptions of the ideal father as a kind of parental behavior. We believe that there are two ways of exerting such influence — by incorporating the image of the ideal father into his own father’s attractive traits, and by abandoning his unattractive traits. For example, the low assessment of responsibility in the image of one’s own father increases the importance of emotional stability in the image of the ideal father, and the emotional instability and excessive trustfulness of one’s own father increases the importance of responsibility in the image of the ideal father, etc.
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