THAT'S MEN:A father who cares can make a difference
THAT THE presence of a father in the home makes a major difference in the lives of children shouldn’t really need saying. Yet it’s easy to forget in the era of single parenthood, divorce and sperm donation.
It’s not a statement that is welcomed if it sounds like a criticism of single mothers. For the record, I regard single mothers as heroines. I do not understand how they manage to cope alone and I believe they get a lot less credit than they deserve. Single motherhood is tough. Homes without fathers tend to have lower incomes than those with two parents. It is almost impossible for single mothers to develop their careers so they can earn good money.
All of this has an effect on the children. The single mother is far less likely to be able to pay for grinds and extracurricular activities than a two-parent family. US studies suggest the children of single parents are at greater risk of abusing alcohol and drugs, and of getting into trouble with the law.
Single mothers are at higher risk than others of suffering from depression and isolation. The demands of the role leave little time for socialising.
For all these reasons, the presence of fathers matters. But as Marie Hartwell-Walker writes in her blog at PsychCentral.com, “This is not to say that mothers can’t successfully raise their children alone. They can and do. But it is much, much harder on everyone. This is not to say that women should stay with an abusive spouse for the sake of the kids. They shouldn’t.”
Her article can be read at http://bit.ly/hartwell-walker.
Promoting the presence in families of what might be called “good enough” fathers (just as children need “good enough” mothers and not perfect mothers) nonetheless has benefits for everybody concerned. We should stop being afraid to say so.
But whether the father lives inside or outside the home, the quality of his relationship with his children is of crucial importance to their future.
This is underlined in another small-scale study in which researchers at the University of Arizona looked at the influence of fathers on the subsequent sexual behaviour of their daughters. Daughters who get poor-quality parenting from their fathers are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour later. Why this should be is not clear. Perhaps poor fathering leaves daughters with lower expectations of the men they meet.
Some therapists would say that where a father has little to do with his children, typically following a divorce, the daughter engages in an unconscious effort to create the intimacy of a father-daughter relationship, through involvement with older men or with men who are powerful.
In the Arizona study, daughters were asked to rate the quality of the fathering they got. In about half of cases the parents had divorced and in the other half they were still living together.
Where the parents were divorced, the older sisters had had more contact with the father than the younger ones.
The daughters of men who were warm and supportive were less likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour than the daughters of harsh and abusive men. The researchers’ definition of risky behaviour included having sex without a condom or while drunk, having multiple sexual partners or becoming pregnant as a teenager.
A particularly interesting finding was that the quality of the relationship mattered more than the length of time the daughters had lived with their fathers. The results of the study will be published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. See bit.ly/arizonafathers for more.
The lesson from this and much other research is abundantly clear: fathers really, really matter. And if they cannot live in the same household as their children, they can still make a massive difference by maintaining a warm and supportive relationship with them.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind - Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail.