Dad matters - and can matter a lot

Full article: http://www.livescience.com/20997-science-fatherhood-fathers-day.html

Key points

Children who feel rejected by their parents (one or both) suffer:

• more likely to be hostile, aggressive, emotionally unstable
• more likely to have low self-esteem, have feelings of inadequacy, have negative worldviews.

(Khaleque & Rohner 2012 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

Dad's input can be even more important than Mum's

• Behavior problems, delinquency, depression, substance abuse and overall psychological adjustment are all more closely linked to Dad's rejection than Mum's
• "Knowing that kids feel loved by their father is a better predictor of young adults' sense of well-being, of happiness, of life satisfaction than knowing about the extent to which they feel loved by their mothers."

(Khaleque & Rohner 2012 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

Kids appear to learn persistence more from Dad

• Higher persistence is linked with higher engagement and lower delinquency at school
• This is attributed to the parenting style of fathers, one that is characterized by warmth and love, accountability to the rules (including explanations of why those rules exist), and age-appropriate autonomy for kids

(Padilla-Walker et al. 2013 Journal of Early Adolescence)

Footnote: "Dad" in the above generally refers to an adult male engaged in raising the children, whether genetically related or otherwise.

Dad's still dad, despite a divorce

Learn to share !

These are not my words, but they could be! Carolyn Managh whispered them. I've co-opted them in a shout-out to dads post-divorce:

"Divorce invariably means one parent gets control, the other gets controlled access. Usually Dads (sorry ladies, the statistics back this up). Now, he didn’t stop being a Dad when the divorce went through. So why is time with his children determined by the amount of child support or the Family Court? Never having gone through this horrific scenario, it was shocking to hear Associate Professor Robert Kenedy explain that in all Commonwealth countries, the legal system and alimony (dollars & pounds) determine who is and who isn’t a Dad after Divorce. That sucks no matter how you look at it. Most shockingly from the children’s perspective because they didn’t divorce their Dads, but the system is forcing them to."

Check out the "Man whisperer" and read more of what she has to say beyond the above.

Meanwhile, let's try to get mums and dads and lawyers and judges and politicians to do what our children are taught to do in pre-school: "Learn to share!"

Daddy's dream: to be an equal parent!

Doyin (pronounced doe-ween) has made a splash on the internet showing the world how Dads do their job.

Their job as fathers that is of course, not whatever other job it is that they might have that earns money and status, oh, and stress!

Doyin's post of a picture of him brushing his daughter's hair while carrying another in a baby carrier has evoked a range of excited responses.

But as he notes, it was the ones that made a big deal of him doing this stuff that is kind of weird. As Doyin points out, if a mother posted a similar picture, it would be no big deal.

It would be bit like a photograph of a working mum sitting at her desk in her office drinking her morning cup of coffee and printing out the monthly sales report.

Yep, really weird.

Thanks Doyin, more evidence of 'the other glass ceiling'!

Here's Doyin's dream - in his own words:

"I have a dream that people will view a picture like this and not think it’s such a big deal. Don’t get me wrong here – it’s a very cute picture, and it’s cool when people say so. However, I start to get a little uncomfortable when people want to start planning parade routes for me because of it. Somewhere there’s a dad doing the exact same thing for his daughters. Somewhere there’s a dad who put his foot down with his boss and refused to attend an “urgent staff meeting” so he could leave work early to attend his daughter’s dance recital. Somewhere there’s a single dad successfully getting his three sons ready for school. Somewhere there’s a stay at home dad crushing all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry for his family. Somewhere there’s a dad who would rather play catch in the backyard with his son instead of killing pixelated terrorists on his XBox.

In other words, there are plenty of good, involved dads out there. Many of them are reading this post right now.

I’ve posted hundreds of pictures of my family since I started blogging and I had no idea that this one would cause such a seismic shift on the WWW. But what if I posted a picture of MDW doing what I did in that picture? Many would probably think it’s cute, but after ten seconds of looking at it, they would probably move on to the next shiny object on their newsfeed. Why? Because it just wouldn’t be a big deal to many people if a woman did it.

Until we can get to the point where men and women can complete the same parenting tasks and the reactions are the same, we will have problems. If you want to create a statue for me for taking care of my daughters, create one for the moms who are doing the same damn thing everyday for their kids without receiving a “Thank you” or an “Ooooh” or “Ahhhh.”

These behaviors should be expected of moms and dads. No exceptions."

Dads learn by doing

As Dads get more involved with raising children, they begin to understand what Mums have been saying for some time: raising children is a tough gig, rewarding of course, but challenging too.

To do this combined with a productive career is even tougher.

So, how come men seem to have taken so long to get the message?

Well, it's because he didn't hear the message.

It could be that men just don't hear very well, but I suspect that men in general just don't seem to learn that way. (And maybe a good number of women too - but that's another story).

Dads are beginning to realise that child-care is anything but child's play - not because of Mum's advice, but because he is getting involved.

Now Mum's advice is well-meaning, but most parents will freely admit that there is no instruction manual for raising children.

And even if there was, almost everyone would agree that it would be highly unlikely that Dad would be willing to read it!

I don’t even read the instructions before trying to put together some flat-pack from Ikea, so why am I going to go to the instruction book for raising my child? 

I like to learn by doing - not by reading the manual.

Oh and in case there is any doubt, I'm not very fond of having the manual read to me either!

We know that men are already notoriously reluctant to ask for directions. However, to be clear, when I choose not to ask for directions, it is not simply out of shyness on my part. If directions or advice are offered unsolicited, I am not likely to be very receptive!

The same goes for parenting advice.

Perhaps it is because I don't like to confronted by my own incompetence, perhaps it is ego-threatening, or perhaps I just like the challenge of solving the problem without the instruction book!

Men do learn stuff, lots of stuff, and without the instruction manual.

Men learn about parenting the same way that Mums do?

First and foremost, they learn by doing. This will almost certainly involve some trial and error - which can be tough on everyone involved when some the child scrapes some bark or breaks a limb, but it is a way of learning.

Dad (like Mum) does learn from others - but more from their example than from their advice.

So Mum take heart. Your example is important, even if your advice is, well, like the instruction manual, an unused resource!

Perhaps the most striking example offered by modern mothers to fathers is not so much in terms of how to care for the children, but rather her example in how she engages in raising children and engages in a productive career outside the home.

Huh! How is that?

Mums have shown men that child-care can be accommodated alongside other achievements – even in defiance of stereotyping and bias.

Mums have shown dads that being a parent can be accommodated along with other achievements, and even in the face of people doubting their capacity to do so.

Perhaps one of the biggest demographic changes wrought in the last century is the move of women out of the home and into the workplace. Mums (and other women in general) have proved clearly that they are quite capable of operating in the workplace. Even showing that they can break down barriers to do so if need be.

The migration of mothers to the workplace has shown Dads two things. One, career and child-rearing can both feature in your life, and so Dads are implicitly invited to participate more on the domestic front.

The second service is to show Dad the way of defying ‘invisible’ barriers that might prevent him being a participative parent. The boss, colleagues, peers may sneer at men that choose to put a high priority on rearing the children. However, as we learned in the school yard, it does not always make sense to do as your mates do.

Perhaps men (and others!) see men's specialised role in the family to be that of the 'breadwinner'.

However, just as women have rejected the overspecialisation of their sex to one role, men too might be encouraged to reject their overly specialised roles.

In sum, Dads prefer to learn by doing, so Mum, the school m'am role might not be the best approach!

However, you might like to take heart in fine example you offer to Dad, and in particular, the example of how to break through stereotyped sex specialisation that sends men to breadwinning and women to child-caring.

(If Dads are looking for some ideas on what to do, you might try Mal White's book Good Dads Great Dads. It's not an instruction manual, it's just ideas. You can get lots just from the contents page!)