9

Where’s Poppa?

The cat’s in the cradle,
And the silver spoon,
Little boy blue
And the man in the moon.
“When you coming home, Dad?”
“I don’t know when.
But we’ll get together then, son.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

—HARRY CHAPIN,
“Cat’s in the Cradle”

It was Christmas day, and I think my dad was in a really good mood because it was Christmas, and my mom was in a fairly bad mood because she didn’t think we were going to be able to buy anything. The night before, there was nothing, and when we woke up the next morning, Mom was kind of surprised because there were three big boxes under the tree. There was two hot wheels and for my little sister, a doll house that she wasn’t big enough to play with yet, but we put it together for her, and she played with it for a long time. There was a lot of shock, and my mom made a comment to my dad about not knowing if he was going to be able to afford to get us presents, and she asked where he came up with the money, and he said, “Don’t even ask.” Nobody’s ever told me exactly, and I’ve never really asked anybody, but I can kind of figure it out. I know my dad. I asked him about it, and he really didn’t have that much to comment on it. The only thing he would tell me about it is that he did what he had to do to get by. . . .

My mom was just freaking out all the time, yelling and crying. And my dad said the very first time he hit my mom was four days after I was released from the hospital. He said that he hit her up in the head and across the face because I was crying and screaming so much. I was driving my mom nuts, and because she was so frustrated, she started to shake me, and my dad just smacked her smooth across the face and jerked me out of her arms and kind of pretty much yelled at her and accused her of trying to kill me and all that. They were yelling and screaming at each other. . . .

My father began drinking and would occasionally spend the better part of his paycheck at the bar and then come home and pick a fight with my mother. . . . They would yell and scream at one another until he’d sober up or until one of them would eventually leave the house. My father began to drink more frequently and became more abusive to my mother, often shoving her up against the wall, pulling her hair, or slapping her. Even when he was sober, they would fight. My father would set me up against the sofa pillows and punch me in the stomach and say, “My boy’s tough. He won’t cry.” Then he’d laugh until I would laugh too. . . .

My mother had a large mayonnaise jar she used to put change into whenever she could, and it was supposed to be our college money. But my dad snuck out in the middle of the night and stole the money. He went to the bar and didn’t come home for two days. Then my brother says there was a knock at the door in the middle of the night. When Mom opened the door, my father stood on his knees in the doorway, and all he said was, “I’m dying,” and he collapsed forward stone-cold drunk. The next morning he woke up still drunk and told my mom he was sorry for taking “the kids’ money.” But my mom had not yet discovered the missing money, and John said she finally had enough and totally freaked out on him. He said she was throwing things and screaming louder than her other fights with him. So [John] picked me up and carried me to a closet, and he peeked out the crack of the door while she beat him up. She threw an oscillating fan at him and a television and hit him with both. And then hit and kicked him until he passed out again. Then she fell on top of him and cried herself to sleep.

—JEFFREY, AUGUST 1996

Do you know what sticks out in my mind about Walt? It’s funny because I never—all my life I’ve never really been interested in tools. I’ve never been interested in working on cars or anything. But Walt did something for me that was manly. I mean, it was something that a father should do for every son. He went out for all three of us boys, Jeffrey, me, and his son. He bought us hammer and nails. And we were just stoked. We were so happy. We were putting nails into everything. Everything. All over the backyard. We had nails in the fence that, you know, parts of the fence that shouldn’t even come close, you know. We were trying to put them in the house, acting like we were building on the house. And you know what? He never once yelled or screamed at us because we were putting nails into things that shouldn’t be. He didn’t care. The thing was we thought we were being productive. You know, we thought that we were doing something. He never once said that we weren’t being productive. He never once said that we were doing something wrong by hammering nails in anything. And a lot of times I knew that we probably shouldn’t be hammering nails in there, but we wanted to feel like we helped build this. You know what I’m saying? Like this is my backyard, too. I helped build that. . . .

My mom told me that my grandpa wasn’t really hip on the idea of her having a baby and he’d never accept me—or that’s what my mom said—that my grandpa would never accept me because I was a . . . a . . . I don’t know if he [my father] was a Mexican. He was of nationality, that’s all I know. I don’t know exactly what type or whatever, but Mom, she said that [Grandfather] wasn’t going to accept me or whatever. Well, when I was born, who was right there holding me first and everything? It was my grandpa. And ever since I can remember, my grandpa—I’ve always loved his voice. There’s something about that man’s voice that, I don’t know, I can’t explain. It’s something that I’ve always . . . I mean . . . I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s like etched in there. Every time I hear someone talk on the street that sounds even remotely close to him, it’s like I immediately pick up on it. And I don’t know if it’s because it was the first voice I heard or what. But it’s the sweetest one that I’ve heard, that I know in life right now. That is the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard.

—JOHN, AUGUST 1996

Shortly after the last narrative, [Jeffrey’s father] was arrested for armed robbery. He is currently out on bail and awaiting trial. He appears to be heading for a prison sentence and he is, therefore, not a resource for the children.

—SERVICE PLAN NARRATIVE REPORT,
JANUARY 8, 1991, CHILD WELFARE CASE FILE

Besides being male, few factors distinguish violent criminals more consistently than growing up without their fathers. Sixty percent of rapists, 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder, and 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions fit this description.1 Ironically, however, a review of hundreds of research studies on violent child and adult offenders reveals only a handful that focus on the role of fathers.

Dr. Vicky Phares, a researcher at the University of South Florida, has written extensively about this disparity. Her review of eight clinical journals focusing on child development from 1984 to 1991 found that 48 percent of the studies of children with parents involved mothers exclusively and only 1 percent looked exclusively at fathers.2 One review of clinical journals found that seventy-two kinds of child psychopathology were attributed to mothers, while not a single one was attributed to fathers. The same study found mothers mentioned in specific examples of children’s problems at a rate of 5:1 compared with fathers.3 “Where’s Poppa?” Phares inquired in the title of an article published in American Psychologist.

SINS OF THE FATHER

Common sense points toward the understanding that male and female contribute equally to the genetic health or disease of their offspring. But traditionally when something goes wrong, scientists begin from the point of conception to scrutinize the mother—and the egg—to determine causality. Maternal age, nutrition, and personal habits have routinely been the focus for discerning the root of pathology. Fathers and the role of sperm have been absent from the picture. While the mother, through her role in gestation, obviously has more opportunity to provide protection or create risk to the fetus, the role of the sperm is increasingly of interest to scientists, particularly as more attention is placed on the issues of infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects.

Geneticists have successfully learned to look inside the sperm and to examine its contents. They have found that 8–10 percent of sperm from healthy men who have no history of heritable genetic disease are abnormal; some carry microscopic alterations in genetic material or the wrong number of chromosomes. There is growing speculation that these differences may be critical factors in miscarriages, stillbirths, low birth weights, some types of cancer, and behavioral and learning difficulties.4

The causes of these abnormalities in sperm are not known. But environmental toxins, such as alcohol and lead, have been implicated. As long ago as 1860, a report published in France noted that the wives of men working with lead were less likely to become pregnant and when pregnant were more likely to miscarry than other women.5 Studies point to workplace exposures of fathers subjecting their offspring to an increased risk of cancer or leukemia. Paternal exposure to paint and chemical solvents as well as to low levels of radiation has been similarly linked to cancer in their children.6 One study indicates a link between fathers who smoke tobacco and an increased risk of malignancies in their children, even when the mothers are not smokers.7

The negative impact on the fetus of alcohol intake by the mother has been documented by multiple studies.8 The genetic effects of paternal alcohol consumption are only just being examined. But the few studies have produced strong data suggesting that genetic factors related to the drinking behavior of biological fathers have a significant effect on the behavioral and intellectual development of their children.9 Studies of twins and adoptees have demonstrated that sons born of alcoholic fathers are at much greater risk of developing alcoholism than sons of nonalcoholic fathers. The drinking behavior of stepfathers appears to be irrelevant in terms of the development of alcoholism for sons born to either alcoholic or nonalcoholic biological fathers. Sons of nonalcoholic biological fathers showed the same incidence of alcoholism as the general population, while biological sons of alcoholics showed a higher incidence, regardless of how they were raised.

In the early twentieth century, studies of paternal alcohol consumption in animals reported reduced fertility, infant malformations, and high levels of infant mortality in the offspring.10 Modern studies show that alcohol influences fertility and male sexual performance and subsequently affects the overall maturation of the fetus and newborn.11 Several reports suggest that fetal alcohol syndrome may occur in the children of alcoholic fathers with no evidence of heavy alcohol consumption during pregnancy by the mother.12 Although the small size of these studies and a failure to adequately control for variables such as diet, stress, and the presence of other drugs render their results inconclusive, alternate studies on rodents point in the same direction. These studies found that adolescent male rats that ingested moderate amounts of alcohol and were bred to female rodents that had never ingested alcohol, even when followed by an alcohol-free period long enough to restore hormonal balance, resulted in the abnormal development of both male and female offspring.13 The offsprings’ hormonal systems that influence reproduction and stress were affected, as were their capacities for spatial learning. No gross developmental abnormalities were observed, but these subtle abnormalities may have a negative effect on subsequent learning.14 It appears that, at least in rodents, alcohol consumption by males during adolescence may have an even more harmful impact on the next generation.

These studies, while done on rats, raise serious questions about the potential long-term and harmful impact of alcohol on sperm. Researchers speculate that toxins such as alcohol may impair sperm directly or may be transported to the ovum in the female via the seminal fluid, where it is carried by binding to the sperm.15 Another possibility is that alcohol may alter the biochemical and nutritional composition of the seminal fluid, thereby exposing the embryo to toxins at the moment of conception.16 While the exact effects of alcohol on sperm and the manner in which the damage occurs are not yet clear, the reality of this connection has been established in numerous studies. Perhaps the most alarming research of all concerning the impact of alcohol on fathers was reported by Ron Kotulak in the Chicago Tribune in December 1993.17 In a series entitled “The Roots of Violence,” Kotulak interviewed researchers who believe that alcohol may so alter a father’s genes as to cause the offspring to produce insufficient quantities of the neurochemical serotonin. The lowered levels of serotonin in turn predispose the offspring to violent criminal behavior, especially if they also drink alcohol.

Beyond conception, the fathers’ role in shaping their children’s development parallels mothers, though it is not the same. When this development goes awry, retrospective studies show that there are often correlations to negative factors that are associated with both mothers and fathers. Researchers have identified four primary pathways whereby parents may be involved in the creation or transmission of specific emotional or behavioral disorders. These paths include genetic transmission, specific interactions between parents and children, parenting practices (including teaching, coaching, managing the child’s social environment), and marital behavior, especially conflict between parents.18

BYE BYE, BABY BUNTING,
DADDY’S GONE A-HUNTING

“Where’s Poppa?” is a question that can reasonably be posed not only to the researchers whose focus on the mother ignores changing family roles, but also, and more important, to all of us who are submerged in a culture that takes the trend of predominantly female responsibility for children for granted. Each year a larger percentage of children are growing up in single-parent households headed by women. The current figure is that 33 percent of children—1 out of 3 children—live in father-absent homes.19

While all children have fathers, more and more children experience their fathers as men who have moved away whom they see for “visits,” or who have never lived with them at all. In 1960, only 11 percent of American children lived in a home where their father was absent. The census data for 2011 revealed that 1 in 3 American children (24 million) lives in a home where the biological father is not present. Out-of-wedlock births have reached an all-time high of 48 percent. As of 2013, 64 percent of African American children, 34 percent of Hispanic children, and 25 percent of white children lived apart from their biological fathers.20

When the first edition of Ghosts was written, 40 out of 100 first marriages ended in divorce compared with 16 out of 100 in 1960. The figure has greatly reduced: 3.6 per 1,000 marriages ended in divorce in 2011.21 This decline in the divorce rate may be, at least in part, a function of the economy, according to the reported findings of a study done at Ohio State University, which followed 7,272 people from 1979 to 2008. Most of the study participants who separated from a spouse got a divorce within three years of breaking up. But 15 percent of those who separated did not get a divorce within the first ten years for financial reasons, saying they just couldn’t afford it, especially when there were children involved. The study showed that the couples that chose long-term separation over divorce tended to be low-income ethnic and racial minorities with young children.22

In 2011, census data showed that 44 percent of children in ­mother-only households were living in poverty compared with 12 percent of children living in married-couple homes. The Fragile Families Study—involving 2,111 families—examined the effects of mothers’ relationship changes on babies from birth to age three. Children born to single mothers showed higher levels of aggressive behavior than children born to married mothers. Additionally, partnership transitions can have a deleterious effect on the child’s development and on attachment in their future.23

Another interesting trend was reported by the Pew Research Center in May 2013. Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, Pew found that 40 percent of households with children under age eighteen include mothers who are the sole or primary source of income for the family—quite a change from the 11 percent reported in 1960. Moreover the majority of these breadwinning moms are single mothers—86 percent, or 8.6 million.24

The committed involvement of a nonresident biological father in his child’s life can make a huge difference on the impact of such shifting demographics. For example, one study of low-income minority adolescents (ten to fourteen years old) found that higher social encounters and frequent communication with nonresident biological fathers decreased many children’s delinquent behaviors.25

Among African American families, a major contribution to the abundance of absentee fathers is the rate of imprisonment of African American men. Penelope Leach, a British pediatrician who has written extensively about child development, believes that this pattern of incarcerating parents as a primary response to many less serious kinds of crime (e.g., drug possession) may be doing as much harm as good:

I take it to extremes and say that the fact that a man is a practicing father is one of the things we ought to consider when we’re putting him in jail or not. Because those children have a call on his presence just as society has a call on revenge. Given that knowledge, it seems that the needs of children ought to weigh far more heavily than they do in our society’s choices about how to best deter and punish crime.26

In spite of the data, one study of fathers in an impoverished African American midwestern community found that 70 percent of the fathers of one thousand children on welfare acknowledged their children and “provided them with kinship affiliation.”27 Another study of African American teenage fathers who were interviewed eighteen months after the birth of their child showed that 12 percent lived with their child, 25 percent saw their child every day, and 28 percent saw their child three to six times per week. Only 2 percent had no contact. Where fathers have never married the mothers, 57 percent consistently visit their children in the first two years. But by the time the children are seven and a half years old, fewer than 25 percent of fathers are consistently visiting their children.28 While it might seem that father absence translates to a lack of influence by the father on the child, this simply isn’t the case. The lack of a father’s presence has a direct impact on the child. Correlative data show that children growing up without fathers are five times more likely to live in poverty. They are also more likely to repeat a grade in school, to be suspended or expelled from school, and to drop out.29 The correlations between absent fathers and poor outcomes for children are numerous. In addition, factors such as maternal depression, child neglect, and other issues associated with either financial difficulties or the impact of multiple stressors on single-parent families are highly related to father absence. As a culture we seem to have convinced ourselves that raising children is the domain of women, but as we look more closely at the dynamics surrounding child abuse, child neglect, disruptive behavior disorders, violence in the home, head injury, and substance abuse—the reality is that fathers, whether present or absent, exert a major influence on their babies.30

LIFE WITHOUT FATHER

The killing of five-year-old Eric Morse in Chicago in the fall of 1994 captured national attention due to the age of his murderers, who were ten and eleven years old. The boys dangled and then dropped Eric from a fourteen-story apartment window because he wouldn’t steal candy for them. The killers, A.J. and P.R., both of whom lived with single mothers, became inseparable friends after their fathers were imprisoned: A.J.’s dad for stalking his mother and P.J.’s dad for drug dealing. For these boys, father guidance, a strong male image, and the learning of values and handy skills came in the form of the Gangster Disciples gang, which also provided an opportunity for physical safety and economic survival. In describing the role of the gang in the lives of younger boys, reporter Scott Minnerbrook wrote in an article published in U.S. News & World Report several months after Eric’s death:

They are sometimes literally father, brother, uncle or their substitutes and often the only acceptable male role models there are. . . . The G.D.’s take the aggressive young boys under their wings, buy them fancy leather coats, Air Jordan basketball sneakers and gold bracelets and teach them to count money and evade the police. They treat them to visits to skating rinks in winter and bus tours in summer. They buy presents at Christmas and pass them out to everyone. A favored child, 8 to 10 years old, might be provided with a beeper and given drugs to carry or sell. “The message,” police say, is “You belong to us.”31

When belonging and acceptance—especially by males—are developmentally and culturally programmed needs in young boys, we can predict that an affiliative opportunity will have a great magnetism for male children without other options. While being a good student and having a strong, warm mother may be mitigating factors, the absence of a father or equivalent adult role model places growing numbers of boys at increased risk of criminal involvement. Single parenthood and “broken” families are recurrent themes in the research on criminal behavior. While correlative data indicate that the majority of criminals come from broken homes, it is less clear whether divorce and separation or factors associated with single parenthood and poverty are the cause.

In a review of the hundreds of studies on this topic, Dr. Adrian Raine concludes that there is no causal link between divorce and crime:

Rather than divorce causing delinquency and crime, it is feasible that delinquency causes divorce. Having conduct-disordered, unmanageable, and delinquent children could severely damage a marriage which may for other reasons be at risk for break up. At the least, delinquency could make a significant contribution to divorce and separation.32

Several studies have shown that the underlying link between delinquency and divorce appears to be the father’s criminality. Statistically, when paternal criminality was accounted for as a separate variable, the link between divorce and delinquency disappeared. The delinquency of the child may result either from parental modeling of antisocial behavior or from some combination of genetics and various additional negative social factors in the child’s environment.33 Paternal criminality is one of the strongest single predictors of whether a child will also become a criminal.34 How parental criminality results in crime in the offspring is still not well understood; however, experts believe that parental criminality translates into parental absence, poor discipline, child abuse, and neglect, each of which, beginning in the first months of life, is actually communicated to children as are various parental characteristics through the minute behaviors exchanged between parents and children.

Other studies indicate that divorce does not appear to lead to later criminal behavior by children when it is followed by emotional and economic stability. It is when divorce is followed by additional changes in the family constellation that the children are placed at significantly increased risks for crime.35 In fact, it appears that when divorce results in an end to marital discord, it may lead to better family relationships and reductions in conduct disorders in children.36 The marital status of the parents does not appear to be the primary factor affecting children’s behavior. Rather, it is the quality of the relationship between the parents and their availability to nurture and stimulate the child that makes all the difference in predisposing a child to or protecting a child against later criminal behavior. An interesting fact surfacing in the research is that broken homes may actually be less likely to produce criminal children than homes in which the missing parent is replaced by a surrogate. To begin with, preschoolers who live with a natural parent and a stepparent are forty times more likely to be abused than children living with two biological parents.37 To further undermine the view that “intact” is always better than “broken” when it comes to families and predisposition to crime, studies have unveiled the fact that unhappy but intact homes may produce more delinquents than broken homes that are clear of parental conflict. In a study by the Department of Justice in Rochester, New York, 70 percent of the adolescents who grew up in families where the parents fought with each other reported violent delinquency as compared with 49 percent of those who grew up in families without that type of conflict.38 Parental discord and conflict appear to be more critical in shaping delinquency than the absence of one biological parent.39

As we look even more deeply at the underlying factors shaping children’s behavior, it appears that the mothers’ degree of warmth and affection are variables that fundamentally mediate the link between broken homes and crime.40 Where mothers are highly affectionate with their sons, the marital status of the home seems to make little difference in the outcome for adult crime. The highest levels of crime are found among boys who had both a broken home and an unaffectionate mother.41

MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY

Dr. T. Berry Brazelton claimed that from just a short piece of a videotape of the moving arms and legs of a baby he could tell you whether the baby was with his mother or his father at the time of the taping.42 Brazelton noted that right from the start, fathers interact differently with their babies than do mothers. While the mother croons to the baby, uses her voice and arms to gentle and envelop the baby in a fluid give-and-take pattern so that the baby’s arms and legs move smoothly toward her, dads “poke.” Their behaviors with their babies are playful, much more apt to elevate the babies’ mood and alertness. Dads use fingers to entertain and rouse the child. A baby’s arm and leg movements reflect these more animated gestures in spiky, quick, vigorous movements that are less fluid and less directed toward the adult.

Without a doubt, fathers bring a different set of gifts to a relationship with a child than mothers. They nurture differently; they teach and discipline differently. And children clearly benefit from the combination. Significant differences in parenting style by mothers and fathers continue throughout a child’s development. Mothers continue to pick up their babies and toddlers, rolling them in to their bodies, creating an envelope of safety. Fathers will more often put the baby over his shoulder or hold the baby so that it can see the world going on around him or her. Although there are exceptions to every rule, dads tend to be more directive, moms more apt to let the child lead the interaction. Fathers will often take risks with infants that mothers will resist, such as trying to balance a baby in the air in a sitting or standing posture. A father’s interactions overall are likely to foster risk taking and independence, while the mother encourages intimacy, protection, and a focus on nuances of emotion shared between them. This early exposure to paternal caretaking appears to result in children who are generally more comfortable with new people and situations as they reach out into the world.43

Wade Horn, former president of the National Fatherhood Initiative based in Germantown, Maryland, talks of fathers’ potential contribution to healthy development under two main categories.44 First, he says, fathers love and support the mothers of their children, contributing stability to a family. He agrees with Raine’s conclusion that maternal warmth and freedom from depression are key factors in the prevention of criminality in children. But he sees the father’s role as important both in mitigating against maternal depression and in facilitating the mother’s ability to be warm and generative with their children.

The second contribution fathers can make in preventing later violence lies in their different style of teaching. Mothers tend to be verbal with their babies; fathers tend to be more physical—wrestling and engaging in rough-and-tumble play, especially with sons. Horn says that fathers have been wrongly discouraged from this form of play by well-meaning but misguided experts who believed it encourages aggression. On the contrary, Horn asserts that new research shows that by rolling around in physical play with their children, fathers are actually teaching their children both emotional self-regulation and the ability to discern essential emotional cues in an interactive relationship. This type of physical play actually provides a mini-practice session in essential skills for handling aggression. When the child gets too rough or excited, fathers will typically tell the child to stop; the child learns that if he doesn’t stop, his father will discontinue playing. The child is also physically feeling and looking at the dad up close and reading facial cues, which provides practice in understanding emotional cues. Horn strongly believes that these opportunities between fathers and their young children are built-in ways of teaching important lessons and that fathers should be encouraged rather than discouraged in their intuitive expression of male parenting style. “We should celebrate the differences!” he says.

The National Fatherhood Initiative appears to be responding to a widely felt need in our society to reassert the importance of male investment in children. The organization is actively encouraging public education and advertising that emphasize the message that being strong is being nurturing, that active involvement with their babies is not only crucial to the babies, but also manly. Horn says:

Dads do provide something that is unique, and these contributions don’t just start when the child is old enough to play soccer but really start at the beginning of life, during pregnancy and the first couple of years of life. . . . We have somehow implied in our society that fatherhood is basically about money. Fathers’ contributions to the well-being of their kids is not just as economic providers but as nurturers and disciplinarians and teachers and coaches and role models.45

The newspaper comic strip Adam and movies such as Mr. Mom document the growing trend for fathers to become primary caregivers of young children while their mothers are the primary wage earners. Although roles are changing, primarily in white, middle-class families, so that more fathers are in fact becoming “stay-at-home dads,” mothers are still the predominant caregivers of young children. Fathers spend an average of 3.2 hours per day with their infants.46 A father’s time tends to be more typically spent playing with the baby (37.5 percent) compared with mothers (25.8 percent). Fathers tend to involve their infants in more rough-and-tumble play than do mothers, particularly if the baby is a boy, while mothers are primarily responsible for basic care such as feeding and diapering. When mothers play, they are more likely to involve their babies with object play, a toy or book, or a finger.47 All things being equal, little children seem to prefer to play with their fathers and to seek comfort from their mothers, even as infants.48

Though fathers typically assume less routine caregiving, the time they spend with their children appears to pay off. Greater father involvement with five-month-old male infants has been positively correlated with their greater social responsiveness and with higher scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development.49 By the time children are sixteen and twenty months of age, their advanced development appears to be directly linked to the father’s positive perception of his child, plus his ability to engage the child in play and to anticipate independence on the part of the child.50

From the beginning of life, especially when children are born at high risk (e.g., premature infants) or when they develop physical, emotional, or cognitive problems, fathers can make striking differences in the child’s course of development. These differences show up early and are sustained through preschool.51 One study on the effect of fathers on outcomes for premature infants found that father-involved children are more socially responsive at five, sixteen, and twenty-two months, are more cognitively competent in preschool, and are less prone to conduct disorders or risk of abuse.52 Involved fathers have more positive perceptions of their children and are better at engaging their children in play and in anticipating their children’s characteristic responses. Frequent visits by fathers to their preterm babies in the hospital result in larger weight gains for the babies as well as better motoric and social development. In a study of almost one thousand babies, the mean IQ for African American preschoolers at age three increased by six points as a result of father involvement.53 This same study also showed that higher involvement by fathers produced fewer behavioral problems.

Interest in attachment to fathers by babies has typically taken a backseat to that of mother-baby attachment. While it is more typical, especially in two-parent families, for infants to first attach to the mother through basic caregiving, we know that babies attach to their fathers at approximately the same time if fathers are available for regular contact.54 In families in which the mother is absent, ill, or unavailable, a secure attachment with the father may compensate for an insecure or nonexistent relationship with the mother.55 When both parents are available, infants tend to reach to their mothers for soothing even in the presence of their fathers,56 turning to their fathers when vulnerable feelings are pacified. The attachment process between fathers and sons appears to be particularly centered around boisterous physical play, which boys continue to desire and initiate with their fathers as they mature.57

Clearly, it is in the best interests of children to have the physical and emotional availability of two people who love them supremely rather than just one. Research has consistently shown that, as a group, children who are securely attached to two parents show better adjustment than those attached to only one or the other.58 Each parent provides important role models for gender-based issues with children. First loves are typically of one’s opposite-sex parent, and these relationships may have lasting repercussions on future loves. When fathers are not in the home, the raising of sons by a mother alone can prove particularly challenging, especially as the child grows to adolescence in a family without alternate positive role models. In Body Count, coauthored by William Bennett, John DiIulio, Jr., and John Walters, Bennett says, “We have come to the point in America where we are asking prisons to do for many young boys what fathers used to do.”59 In fact, particularly as more mothers enter the labor force, we are asking agencies, bureaucracies, and organizations in growing numbers—schools, day care centers, child welfare, and private treatment agencies—to do for children what parents used to do. And none of these are satisfactory parents.

POSTSCRIPT

Evidence of the importance of the fathering role continues to mount. The newest data confirm that children who live with their biological or adoptive fathers are less likely to die as infants; experience poverty, child abuse, or neglect; experience emotional and behavioral problems; and have poor school outcomes. As teens, these children are less likely to engage in aggressive behaviors, drug use, and criminal behavior, as well as activities resulting in teen pregnancy.60

Fortunately, the role of “father” is far more fluid than in the past. Modern-day fathers are not always the traditional breadwinner, the disciplinarian, or even the authority figure of two generations ago. Fathers may be gay or straight, adoptive or a stepparent, single or married, employed outside the home or the main caretaker of the children. According to the American Psychological Association, as of 2001 more than 60 percent of women were employed outside the home and were in many cases the primary breadwinner. As traditional gender roles continue to merge, there have been declining rates of fertility and increasing rates of divorce, remarriage, and single parenting.61

In the midst of rapidly changing roles and confusing expectations, we are seeing increasing recognition that fatherly love is as important as motherly love. The differences and complementarity of what each parent brings to a child is optimal for his or her development. New data underscore the fact that children who receive constructive affection from their fathers launch into their own lives with fewer obstacles than their single-parented peers, finding the world less daunting and struggling less with behavioral, academic, or substance abuse issues. It is no longer uncommon to see young fathers kiss and cuddle their offspring in a public setting. It is no longer an aberration for dad to stay at home with a baby while mom returns to work. Father-focused playgroups and support groups are available in many communities.

Research on child care in U.S. families indicates that in the year 2000, married fathers spent an average of 6.5 hours a week directly focused on caring for their children, a 153 percent increase since 1965. Married mothers spent 12.9 hours, representing a 23 percent increase, while single mothers spent 11.8 hours, a 57 percent increase since 1965. Modern parents (who are more often than not employed outside the home) are busier and more stressed than ever before.

One message regarding fathers is still too often missing in our culture, one that family therapists see every day. A critical role for fathers—vital to the health of their children—is to connect protectively to the mother, to surround her (especially during pregnancy) with a calming message about her safety and well-being. This reassurance affects the fetus through the mother’s emotional chemistry. During pregnancy and the first thousand days of life, a new and exceptionally vulnerable little nervous system is taking shape. While gender roles are shifting away from only fathers providing financial security, a unique and crucial (yet often poorly understood) role for fathers is to provide emotional security, especially after birth when mothers’ hormonal chemistry is still regaining equilibrium. Because early development is so crucial to all that follows, the first thousand days of life are a time of huge vulnerability for couples and their babies. As we find ourselves in the fastest rate of social change in human history, the quality of the relationship between parents—kindness, friendship, loving gestures and words—is even more crucial to children’s health and well-being.