PARENTING PLUS:A good relationship can ease the growing pains, writes DAVID COLEMAN
BY THE time your teenager is ensconced in the heart of their adolescence many fathers feel sidelined to the role of bank ATM, taxi driver or recipient of a hormonal battering ram. The idea of maintaining or sustaining a close relationship with your teen can feel a long way from the reality of your conflict, frustration or despair with them.
However, it is crucial that fathers in particular don’t minimise their paternal role. We typically get cast as the disciplinarian, but actually our role is broader and more holistic. We are vital to the healthy and prosocial development of our sons and daughters.
I was recently reading two pieces of research that really underlined, for me, the importance of my own role as a father. What was most fascinating was that the two pieces of research were carried out more than 30 years apart and yet had almost identical findings.
The more recent research found that on average, adolescents whose fathers are more involved in their lives and discuss important decisions with them exhibit lower levels of aggression and antisocial behaviour than peers who experience less paternal involvement.
In other words, the greater the fathers’ involvement was, the lower the level of adolescents’ behavioural problems, both in terms of aggression and antisocial behaviour and negative feelings such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.
In this study, fathers’ involvement was measured by the frequency with which fathers discussed important decisions with and listened to their teenagers. Other measures of involvement were whether fathers knew who their sons and daughters were with when not at home; whether fathers missed events or activities that were important to their teenagers, and also the teenagers’ reports of closeness to their fathers.
The other research, carried out in the 1970s, found that teenage boys who experience supportive and affectionate relationships with their fathers are less likely to engage in delinquent behaviour than peers who do not experience such a father-son relationship.
What seemed to be central was that fathers supervised their sons. In other words, these fathers took an active interest in the whereabouts of their sons and who they were with and what they were up to. This kind of paternal supervision, as well as supportive and affectionate father-son relationships, discouraged juvenile delinquency, regardless of whether their sons had “delinquent” friends.
It is clear, then, that we can’t afford to abdicate responsibility for what happens to our sons and daughters as they move through the teenage years. It is not enough for us dads to claim that we are busy and to leave the parenting decisions and roles up to our wives and partners. The most important message I take from the research findings is that if I continue to take an active interest in my children’s lives, then I give them greater chances and opportunities to stay out of trouble and stay focused on learning and growing. I think my children are worth it – and I am sure yours are too.
David Coleman is the author of Parenting is Child's Play: The Teenage Years