Today’s item evolved from ongoing observations that dads get little respect. Out of spite and bitterness, some mothers would even estrange her children from their father.
Decades of research have carefully documented the problems associated with children growing up without fathers. Despite the obvious, we sometimes hear the news media tout and even advocate for “genderless” or “same-sex” parenting.
Recently, we read a refreshing article by Jenet Jacob Erickson in the Deseret News (October 21, 2012) about scientific research on the important psychological influences of dads on children. Ideas from her article are repeated in this blog.
Erickson described research by Andrea Doucet involving 118 primary caregiver dads, including stay-at-home dads. This research shows conclusively that fathers have a completely different parenting style: To develop normally, children need the masculine parenting style that only a dad can provide.
Doucet concluded that fathers do not "mother," and that's a good thing. Although mothering and fathering have much in common, the father provides persistent, critical differences important to healthy child development.
How do fathers nurture children? To begin with, fathers more often use fun and playfulness to connect with their children. No doubt, many a mother has stood by--holding her breath--while fathers "tickled and tossed" their infants. Yet playfulness and fun are often critical modes of connection with children.
Fathers also more consistently make it a point to get their
children outdoors for physical activities, as if they intuitively knew that
focusing on physical development was also critical to nurturing. These activities involve risks that mothers
might otherwise avoid.Fathers are also more likely to guide their children in deciding how much risk to take, and then to encourage them in that risk taking—whether on the playground, in schoolwork, or at trying something new. This is the way dads foster independence in everything from children making their own lunches and tying their shoes to doing household chores and making academic decisions.
When fathers respond to children's hurts, they also focus more on fixing the problem than the hurt feeling. This seeming "indifference" to those feelings turns out to be useful, particularly as children grow older. As a result, normal children will then seek out and share things with their dads precisely because of dad’s problem-solving responses.
Psychologically damaged children deprived of a fathers influence avoid talking to and sharing with their dads later in life, and are often highly critical of their dads for perceived shortcomings.
As she evaluated these differences, Doucet wondered if dads just weren't just as "nurturing" as moms. Their behaviors didn't always fit the traditional definition of "holding close and responding sensitively."
But a key part of nurturing also includes the capacity to "let go." It is that careful "letting-go" that fathers are particularly good at—in ways that mothers often are not. These vital contributions by dads underscore the many research findings that when dads are not present, children are more likely to suffer and experience serious psychological dependencies, even into adulthood.
Arguments for the non-essential father may reflect an effort
to be more accepting of the reality that many children grow up without their
dads. But surely a more effective and
compassionate approach to social problems would be to acknowledge the uniquely
different contributions of mothers and fathers in their children's lives, then to
do whatever we can to ensure that we understand the importance of a father’s
contributions to child development.
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"My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass.' 'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys!' "
-- Harmon Killebrew
"He didn't tell me how to live; he lived; he lived greatness, and he let me watch him do it." -- adapted from Clarence Budington Kelland
"My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass.' 'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys!' "
-- Harmon Killebrew
"He didn't tell me how to live; he lived; he lived greatness, and he let me watch him do it." -- adapted from Clarence Budington Kelland
