The Catholic Standard & Times - The science of fatherhood

The science of fatherhood

By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

From the first moments of life, a baby can tell the difference between Mom and Dad.

Dad is usually larger than mom, his voice is deeper, and he moves differently. Dad also has a different scent than Mom, his skin texture is different and he wears a different kind of clothing.

Even a newborn infant quickly learns that Mom and Dad also fulfill different needs. When the baby is hungry or tired, he prefers Mom. When he wants to play, he looks for Dad.

Although the importance of fathers is often discussed within the context of the latest political debate, the last few decades have seen a substantial pile of scientific evidence proving that fathers are indispensable to the well-being of children.

For instance, new research on the way the brain functions is making it more and more clear that exposure to both a father and a mother is very important in helping a child to develop fully his or her own sexual identity, as well as to learn how to relate to persons of both sexes in the world.

One long-time fatherhood researcher and psychologist, Henry Biller, wrote in his book, “Fathers and Families: Paternal Factors in Child Development,” that contact with a father during the first three years of life has many positive effects on a child’s development:

“Involved fathers are more likely to stimulate the infant to explore and investigate new objects, whereas mothers tend to engage their infants in relatively pre-structured and predictable activities.

“Infants who develop positive relationships with both their parents are likely to feel secure in exploring their environment in a relaxed manner and to enjoy being picked up by others.

“Well-fathered infants are more secure and trusting in branching out in their explorations, and they may be somewhat more advanced in crawling, climbing and manipulating objects.”

Researchers have found that several measures of infant competence were correlated with the degree to which 5- and 6-month-old babies were involved with their fathers.

If interaction with dad is so critical in the first months of life, what impact does it have on the rest of the child’s life?

According to research compiled by the National Fatherhood Initiative, the impact of fathers is enormous: “Children who live absent from their biological fathers are, on average, at least two-to-three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be the victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than [are] their peers who live with their married biological (or adoptive) parents.”

Four decades of increased divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing has resulted in a true fatherhood crisis in America.

“Twenty four million children live in homes without their biological father,” writes the child psychologist Wade F. Horn, a former president of the NFI. “That means that tonight, one out of every three children will go to bed in a home in which their father does not live. For the first time in our nation’s history, the average child will spend at least a significant portion of his or her childhood living apart from his or her father.”

Research has found that the root cause of the fatherhood crisis is the physical disappearance of fathers from families.

“Two major demographic trends contributed to the rise in father absence,” Horn writes. “The increase in divorce and the increase in unwed childbearing.”

At present, an estimated 40-to-50 percent of all marriages end in separation or divorce, which affects a million children a year. The proportion of births that occur out of wedlock rose 600 percent from 1960 to 2000.

Now, however, there is a welcome boom of interest in the study of fatherhood, and an impressive body of research has been accumulated.

One example of that research is an analysis of nearly 100 studies on parent-child relationships that was published in the December 2001 edition of the Review of General Psychology. That study found that a father’s love was as important as a mothers in predicting the social, emotional and cognitive development of children.

“Having a loving and nurturing father was as important for a child’s happiness, well-being, and social and academic success as having a loving and nurturing mother,” researchers concluded.

Other findings from the review: “Withdrawal of love by either the father or mother was equally influential in predicting a child’s emotional instability, lack of self-esteem, depression, social withdrawal and level of aggression.

And: “In some studies, father love was actually a better predictor than mother love for certain outcomes, including delinquency and conduct problems, substance abuse and overall mental health and well-being. … Other studies found that, after controlling for mother love, father love was the sole significant predictor for certain outcomes, such as psychological adjustment problems, conduct problems, and substance abuse.”

Another impressive study done Harvard University, which spanned 26 years, found that children with involved fathers are more likely to mature into compassionate adults, and are more likely to have higher self-esteem and grade point averages and to be more social.

That research has gained the attention of lawmakers, the media, and a variety of social-service programs, which are now working to educate the public about the importance of fatherhood.

Wade believes those initiatives may already be paying off.

“The decades-long rise in father absence has stopped,” he writes. “From 1960 to 1996, the number of children who lived in homes without a father or stepfather rose steadily from seven million to nearly 20 million. Since the mid-1990s, the number and proportion of children in father-absent homes has leveled off. And the percentage of children living with both parents has remained fairly steady during the past decade.”

Researchers are hoping that is more than just a momentary trend, but a signal of better times to come.

That is a hope that scientists share with the Catholic Church.

In the June 12, 1970, edition of Commonweal magazine, the parish priest and author Henri Nouwen wrote that the coming generation would be known by “its sense of inwardness, convulsiveness and fatherlessness.”

In fact, the Church has always known what science is only now discovering. In Familiaris Consortio, we read: “As experience teaches, the absence of a father causes psychological and moral imbalance and notable difficulties in family relationships. … Father absence directly contributes to our most pressing social ills.”

And most American agree. A 1999 national Gallup poll reported that 72 percent of its respondents believed that “the physical absence of fathers from the home is the most significant problem facing America.”