Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked (2 page)

Others have noted the disparity between studies of mothers and of fathers. In 2005, Vicky Phares, a psychologist at the University of South Florida, reviewed 514 studies of clinical child and adolescent psychology from the leading psychological journals. Nearly half of them excluded fathers. Some involved both parents, but only 11 percent focused exclusively on fathers.

In my research, I quickly began running into examples of what Phares was finding: in 2006, for example, Myrna M. Weissman, a distinguished epidemiologist and researcher at Columbia University, published a study seeking to find out whether treating depressed mothers might reduce the known increased risk of anxiety and depression in their children. Treating the mothers did improve the mental health of the children, but the study didn’t include any data on the fathers. Could the involvement of warm, understanding fathers have helped the children even more? Could cold or dismissive fathers have made things worse? Another researcher who was studying interactions between parents and their newborns kept a detailed log of a mother’s behavior and activity with her infant. When the mother gave the infant to its father, the researcher wrote “Baby given to father” and closed her notebook; the experiment was over. In 2005, at a meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, I found hundreds of scientists describing research on children, families, and parenting, and only a dozen or so dealing with fathers. Nearly all the authors of these studies began their talks by noting how little research on fathers had been done.

Kyle D. Pruett, a psychiatrist at Yale who has studied fathers since the 1980s, says that even when fathers are included in research on such important issues as attention deficit disorder, autism, childhood depression, and teen suicide, the researchers usually fail to consider that the father might be part of the solution to the problem. “When we bother to look for the father’s impact, we find it—always. Not looking at the impact of fathers and children on one another has given the entire field (and the best-selling parenting books it produces) a myopic and worrisomely distorted view of child development, a view with staggering blind spots.” The books he’s referring to include those by Dr. Spock, T. Berry Brazelton, and Penelope Leach, among others. Pruett’s review of subsequent editions shows they have begun to “nod more often in the father’s direction,” but “in their souls they couldn’t get past the old seduction of the sacred mother-infant bond.” The dismissal of fathers could not have been clearer. The mark of progress was that most researchers were beginning to recognize the problem and point it out.

This disregard of fathers perpetuates images that are inaccurate, dismissive, and unkind. The historians Elizabeth and Joseph Pleck point to cartoons from
The Saturday Evening Post
, beginning in the 1920s, that depicted father as a bumbling fool who “did not know how to control or discipline his children. He could not cook a meal or put his children to bed without tripping over his shoelaces.” That was only the beginning; fathers were charged with more serious offenses than forgetting the kids’ homework or burning the meat loaf. Some social critics blamed fathers for undermining national security. They argued that the failure of many young recruits to pass their Army physicals during World War II was a problem created by solicitous mothers and absent fathers, who had made sons too soft, weak, or cowardly to fight. There have been exceptions to this father-bashing:
The Cosby Show
and
Father Knows Best
on television; Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
; Bob Cratchit in
A Christmas Carol
. But they’re rare.

Nearly a century after those
Saturday Evening Post
cartoons, cultural stereotypes of the bumbling father persist. In 2012, for example, Huggies diapers launched an advertising campaign that pretended to investigate whether Huggies were tougher than the competition. “Have dads put Huggies to the test!” the ads said. The message was that if Huggies could survive the ineptitude of fathers, they could survive anything. That same year, during the Summer Olympics, Procter & Gamble ran a series of ads in which it looked at the lives of children who had become famous Olympic athletes. The tagline? “Thank you, Mom.” Fathers’ contributions were being erased even in sports, where stereotypes would suggest that they might be the more important parent.

More recently, in June 2013, Clorox published a post on its website that began, “Like dogs or other house pets, new dads are filled with good intentions but lacking the judgment and fine motor skills to execute well.” Among the mistakes that the Clorox dads made were taking their kids out in cold, rainy weather wearing a summer onesie; letting kids eat off the floor; and propping them up in front of television reality shows. A barrage of blog posts and comments by outraged fathers prompted Clorox to take down its post. Clorox presumably intended to amuse its customers, not outrage them, but the joke fell flat. Many fathers are now quicker to challenge such stereotypes, and it’s likely that more advertisers will find other ways to market their products.

*   *   *

Even though the number of studies on fathers still lags far behind those on mothers, the amount of research on fathers is rapidly growing. In the pages that follow, I will walk you through what I think is some of the most important fatherhood research. We will begin with the evolution of fathers, looking at what we know about the family life of our prehistoric ancestors as a way to get a better grip on the role of fathers now. We’ll also learn about how our family backgrounds have prepared us to be fathers. Chapter 2 discusses the tug-of-war between the genes of mothers and fathers that begins at conception.

The next few chapters take us through fatherhood as children grow. In chapter 3, we will look at the changes that occur in fathers during pregnancy. Chapter 4 discusses what we know about fathers after birth, with a detour into monogamy in humans and its significance for fathers and mothers. Chapter 5 shows that fathers and infants are far more connected than once thought. Chapter 6 follows fathers as their children become toddlers and start school, and chapter 7 looks at fathers and adolescents, with an examination of the neuroscience of fatherhood and the hormonal changes men undergo in response to the stages of their children’s lives. In chapter 8, we look at the risks associated with older fatherhood, which is becoming more common as parents struggle with the demands of both children and work. Chapter 9 looks at what fathers
do
—what they contribute to child care and other family work. And in an afterword, I’ll sum up and reflect on what I think I’ve learned along the way—and what we have yet to learn.

*   *   *

I admit that it’s not easy for me to be impartial in addressing questions about the value of fathers. I have a lot at stake here. If fathers don’t matter, I’ve made poor use of my time over the past few decades, wasting countless hours, days, and years on my five children—all for nothing. Not that it wasn’t fun. If it served no purpose, it was, at least a plentiful waste of time of day. As far as I can tell, the kids enjoyed those hours, too, with the possible exception of being required at regular intervals to listen yet again to the one Irish joke I know, delivered in a top-o’-the-mornin’ accent that surely is an insult to my own Irish heritage and probably to the entire nation of Ireland.

Our failure to acknowledge fathers’ importance is now reflected in the shape of the American family. Fathers are disappearing. Fewer American fathers are participating in the lives of their children now than at any time since the United States began keeping records.

However, psychologists, biologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists have begun to generate solid scientific data on why fathers behave the way they do—and why it matters to children. They are investigating fathers’ behavior, the myriad ways that fathers influence their children, and the factors that shape a father’s involvement in his family. Along the way, they’ve discarded any number of stereotypes—or discarded the notion that any one stereotype can explain what a father does. Gone are the father as moral guardian, symbol of masculinity for his sons, and harsh disciplinarian (all father images that were widely accepted and promoted in generations past). Researchers are now showing that fathers play many roles in their families, including those of “companions, care providers, spouses, protectors, models, moral guides, teachers,” and, of course, breadwinners, according to one recent study.

This discovery of the father is one of the most important developments in the study of children and families. The findings, appearing in scholarly journals mostly unfamiliar to the public, have escaped wide attention. That’s unfortunate. I’ve spent the past five years looking over the new science of fatherhood, and I’ve found it extremely useful in thinking about my own behavior as a father with my children. And I’m sure it will be helpful to others.

Too often, public and political discussions of fatherhood—what it means to be a father, and what fathers contribute to their children—devolve into angry rants and arguments. “Although diametrically opposed, the fathers-aren’t-necessary and the father-as-panacea camps share one important feature: they present views that are based more on politics than on actual research,” wrote noted father researcher Ross D. Parke and his collaborator, Armin A. Brott. “While politicians change their views to suit the prevailing electoral climate, academic researchers over the past two decades have been nearly unanimous in their findings: fathers matter. And they matter a lot.”

What does this mean for nontraditional families—single parents, gay parents, or parents who’ve adopted their children? As I was beginning to work on this book, I ran into a friend at a writers’ conference, a single woman who had adopted a child. She asked what I was working on, and when I told her the title of the book—
Do Fathers Matter?
—she immediately said, “Well, of course they don’t.” For a moment, I thought she was joking. But she wasn’t. I tried to explain that while fathers matter, others can help to fill that role, and that I wasn’t critical of her choice. I’ve made my share of mistakes as a parent, and I don’t feel in any position to criticize anyone else. I respect others’ choices and trust that with very few exceptions, we all try to do what’s best for our kids. We’re all in this together, and the new findings on fatherhood should be useful to families of all kinds.

When I was growing up, and politicians were treated with more respect than they are now, it wasn’t unusual for parents to tell their children they could grow up to be anyone they wanted to be—including the president of the United States. We now know that that is a very loaded statement; we live in a society still riven by racial and economic disparities that makes it far easier for some to succeed than for others. But we also know that an African-American child raised by a single parent, who barely knew his father, can grow up to be president. The evidence shows that fathers make important and unique contributions to their children in many ways. It emphatically does
not
show that the children in families without fathers in the home are doomed to failure, or anything close to that. “We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do,” Barack Obama said during his first campaign for the presidency. “So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.”

*   *   *

We often say that nothing is more important to us than our children. But our personal and societal priorities don’t always seem in accord with that professed belief. This book is about fathers, but it is also, importantly, about children. If we envision a future in which all our children have the opportunity to live rewarding lives, then we would be foolish not to consider the role of fathers more carefully. Doing so will strengthen the family, will help mothers, will promote equality, and will create a brighter future for our children. Nothing is more important than that.

ONE

The Roots of Fatherhood
: Pygmies, Finches, and Famine

Fathers who are expecting a baby might work with their wives or partners to prepare the nursery, paint the walls, or shop for a crib. Depending upon their budgets, the male parents-to-be might join their wives in assembling an IKEA bookcase, a global twenty-first-century bonding ritual. But while these activities can get men thinking about fatherhood, much of what prepares them to be parents was done long ago. At least three forces are at work. One is natural selection, which has shaped them to be well suited for fatherhood. The second is their own family’s genetic inheritance, which is part of what makes each father different from all the others. And the third is diet and toxins and other factors in men’s environments. We are now learning not only how these forces shape fathers, but how and why they can sometimes go awry.

Not long ago, on a tranquil summer night in South Florida, I had an experience that made clear how unusual and important human fathers are. I joined scientists observing sea turtles nesting on a beach. We watched a female green turtle dig a deep hole in the sand, midway up the beach, and drop some 150 eggs, each the size of a softball, into the hole. She then buried the eggs with a rhythmic flapping of her rear legs against the sand and scuttled back to the water, leaving her young to hatch, find the ocean and food, and mature with no parental help at all.

While she was laying her eggs, drops of a clear liquid began to fall from her eyes, as it does from many turtle mothers. Legend has it that they are crying for the children they will never know. We were moved as we stood on the beach, watching. But these secretions were not tears—merely a way to shed excess salt that accumulates in the turtle’s body. Crocodile mothers also cry sham tears while laying eggs—which gave rise to the phrase “crocodile tears” to describe sorrowful insincerity.