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Dads are disposable. This is the story now
being told in certain precincts of our culture, from the Hollywood Hills
— “Women are realizing it more and more, knowing that they don't have
to settle with a man just to have that child,” in the words of Jennifer
Anniston — to the Ivy League — Cornell psychologist Peggy Drexler
recently wrote a book, Raising Boys Without Men, that celebrated women raising children without fathers.
There is only one problem with this story: it is a myth that does not fit the facts.
Do not get me wrong. I was
raised by a single mom, and I think I turned out OK, as do many children
raised in fatherless homes. But as a social scientist, I can also tell
you that one consistent conclusion from hundreds of studies on child
well-being is this: on average, children are much more likely to thrive
when they have the good fortune to be raised in a home with their own
married father.
Take money. Despite breathless media accounts about women overtaking men as breadwinners,
in the real world, married fathers still are the primary earners in the
clear majority of married families with children. In fact, married men
take the lead in breadwinning in at least 69 percent of married
families, according to the U.S. Census. And this money matters to
children, insofar as children are more likely to live in a decent home,
attend a good school, and eat well when their family has a good income
derived in part from Dad’s hard work.
But money is not everything,
and dads should not be viewed as human ATMs. This should be an
especially welcome fact to fathers who are unemployed or underemployed
in today’s tough economic times and to families where mom takes the lead
in breadwinning.
Take crime, for example. Boys
who are raised in homes with their fathers are more likely to acquire
the sense of self-worth and self-control that allows them to steer clear
of delinquent peers and trouble with the law. In fact, one Princeton
University study
found that boys from fatherless families were more than twice as likely
to end up in prison or jail before they turned 30, compared to boys
from homes with a married father.
Dads do not matter only for sons. They also matter for daughters.
Take teen pregnancy, for
example. Girls raised in homes with their fathers are more likely to
receive the attention, affection and modeling that they need from their
own fathers to rebuff teenage boys and young men who do not have their
best interests at heart. They are much less likely to initiate sex at an
early age and end up as teenage mothers. For instance, one study
by University of Arizona psychologist Bruce Ellis found that girls
whose fathers left the home before they turned six were about six times
more likely to end up pregnant as teenagers, compared to girls whose
fathers were there for the duration of their childhood.
Or take safety. Fathers play
an important role in ensuring the safety of their children, both by
monitoring their children’s activities and peers, and by signaling to
others, from neighborhood bullies to adults seeking a target for abuse,
that they will not tolerate harm to their children. Indeed, by simply
sticking around, ordinary dads play an important role in protecting
their children from physical, sexual and emotional abuse. For example, a
recent federal study
found that the safest place for a child was a home with her married
mother and father and that children living in a home with mom and an
unrelated male boyfriend were about 10 times more likely to be abused
than their peers living with their married mother and father.
I could go on, citing
statistical chapter and verse about the merits of fathers. But clearly
the myth of the disposable dad does not fit the facts. The social
science tells us a very different story about fathers: In most — albeit
not all — families in America, fathers play an important role in
fostering the healthy educational, emotional and social development of
our nation’s children.
So this weekend, if there is a
good father in your life, or your children's lives, make it clear to
them that he is not disposable.
W.
Bradford Wilcox is the director of the National Marriage Project at the
University of Virginia. He is also the coauthor of "Gender and
Parenthood: Natural and Social Scientific Perspectives" (Columbia
University Press, forthcoming).
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