Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked (17 page)

They have done some of the most interesting work looking at children’s language development in both middle-class and poor, rural families. They’ve found, to their surprise, that not only are fathers important for children’s language development, but that fathers matter
more
than mothers. In middle-class families, parents’ overall level of education and the quality of child care were both related to children’s language development. But fathers “made unique contributions to children’s expressive language development” that went “above and beyond” the contributions of education and child care. When fathers used more words with their children during play, children had more advanced language skills a year later. The implication is that fathers may also be making important contributions to their children’s later success in school.

Vernon-Feagans and Pancsofar suspected the situation might be different in poor families, so they decided to take a look. They selected families from central Pennsylvania and eastern North Carolina, where about half of children lived in poverty at the time. A total of 1,292 infants in two-parent families participated in the study. The researchers visited the children’s families when the children were six months old, fifteen months old, and three years old. They found that fathers’ education and their use of vocabulary when reading picture books to their children at six months of age were significantly related to the children’s expressiveness at fifteen months and use of advanced language at age three. This held true no matter what the mother’s educational level was or how she spoke to the children.

When I spoke with Vernon-Feagans about her findings, she said she was surprised by the difference between mothers and fathers. She had thought they would be equally involved in encouraging their children’s language development. Why would fathers be more important in this regard than mothers? The hypothesis is that it’s because mothers are more attuned to their children, typically spending more time with them than fathers do. That makes mothers more likely to choose words the kids are familiar with. Fathers aren’t as attuned to their kids, so they use a broader vocabulary, and their children learn new words and concepts as a result.

Vernon-Feagans thought there might be another factor at play as well. Because fathers usually spend less time with their children, they are more of a novelty. That makes them more interesting playmates. When she looked at the videos from her language experiments, she saw that fathers were very engaged. Playing with their children was something they enjoyed. It didn’t matter what their income was. “I do think our children see it as very special when they do book reading with their fathers … They may listen more and acquire language in a special way.” The effect of fathers on children’s language continues until they enter school.

But fathers contribute to their children’s mental development more broadly than just with respect to language. They also influence their children’s intellectual growth, adjustment to school, and behavior, as Catherine Tamis-LeMonda of New York University and her colleagues discovered. They were interested in the influence of fathers on language in families involved in Head Start, a federal program intended to enhance the intellectual, emotional, and social development of low-income children in the years before they start school. According to the researchers, poor fathers can have difficulty maintaining “positive and emotionally supportive relationships with their children,” in part because they have limited resources and often unstable employment. Tamis-LeMonda and her colleagues studied 290 fathers who lived in the home with their children and their partners, to find out how their play with children differed from that of mothers, and how their behavior related to their children’s language and cognitive development. The researchers watched fathers’ interactions with their children—and, separately, mothers’ interactions with their children—during a period of free play when the children were two years old, and again when they were three. They found that these were mostly good parents. They challenged the assumption by some researchers “that low-income parents primarily engage in authoritarian exchanges with their young children and that fathers are harsh disciplinarians.” And the sensitivity of the parents, their positive regard for their children, and the intellectual stimulation they offered predicted that the children would do well on tests of development and vocabulary later on.

Supportive parenting on the part of fathers was linked to a boost in children’s intellectual development and their language abilities. Fathers’ good behavior also improved the behavior of mothers with their children—an interesting indirect effect of good fathering. But the importance of father’s income varies from one study to the next. Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University found that wealthier fathers produced a greater rise in their children’s IQs than did similarly active low-income fathers. Nettle doesn’t say why this income disparity exists. It might sound discouraging, but it suggests that improving men’s educational or financial status would confer benefits not only on them but on their children as well.

But that’s not to say that fathers in poorer families have no influence; they do. In 2011, Erin Pougnet, Alex E. Schwartzman, and their colleagues at Concordia University in Montreal set out to assess fathers’ influence over children’s intellectual development and behavioral problems by looking at lower- to middle-income families in which the fathers lived apart from their children, which is the case in about 22 percent of Quebec families. These families have reduced incomes, and the children are less likely to graduate from high school. The researchers looked at the data on the children when they were three to five years old, and again when they were nine to thirteen years old. They found that the presence of fathers in the home was associated with fewer of what are called “internalizing” problems—depression, fear, and self-doubt—in their daughters … but not in their sons. It was unclear why that was the case. And the children of fathers who exhibited more positive kinds of control, such as reasoning, scored higher on a measure of nonverbal intelligence called performance IQ.

How fathers exert these effects is still being teased out. But clearly one way they do it is, again, through play. Mothers, who generally spend more time with their children, are seen by their kids as crucial sources of well-being and security. Children are more likely to think of their fathers as playmates. So it’s not too surprising that infants respond more positively to being picked up by their fathers, because they suspect that means it’s playtime.

“Fathers often use objects in an incongruous way,” writes Daniel Paquette of the University of Montreal. During rough-and-tumble play like this, fathers tend to use playful teasing to “destabilize children both emotionally and cognitively,” which children like—despite the seemingly ominous implications of the word “destabilizing.” It might not sound like a good idea, but this destabilization could have a critical function. It could be helping our children confront one of their principal challenges: the need to learn how to deal with unexpected events. Children’s need to be “stimulated, pushed and encouraged to take risks is as great as their need for stability and security,” says Paquette.

He describes fathers as having an “activation relationship” with their children that “fosters children’s opening to the world.” Fathers’ unpredictability helps children learn to be brave in difficult situations or when meeting new people. In one study of one-year-olds taken to swimming class, researchers observed that fathers were more likely to stand behind their children, so that the children faced the water, while mothers tended to stand in front of the children, the better to make eye contact. In another study, Paquette used the strange situation experiment pioneered by Ainsworth in her research on attachment. He would have a strange adult enter an unfamiliar room with a child, or put toys at the top of a staircase so a toddler would have to climb to get them. Paquette found that fathers were more likely than mothers to encourage risk-taking by being less protective, especially with their sons. He concluded that fathers may be especially important in supporting their children as they move from the family to the world outside the door. And one of the first and most important unfamiliar environments that children encounter is school. Children who make the transition from home to school more easily, who are free of behavior problems and relate well to their peers and teachers, are more likely to do well in kindergarten and elementary school.

*   *   *

Researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development wanted to know how parenting behavior and beliefs are related to children’s transition to school. Much of the previous research had looked at whether fathers were present or absent in the home, and those studies found that the presence of fathers was associated with better outcomes for children. That wasn’t terribly surprising. But the researchers went further, to find out why that mattered. They found that when fathers showed sensitivity to their child in the transition to school and encouraged their child’s autonomy, it predicted a much better relationship between the child and his or her teacher. Paternal encouragement was also associated with better behavior and good social skills on the part of the child.

One of the most convincing summaries of fathers’ contribution to children’s development comes from Sweden. Researchers at Uppsala University wanted to know if there was evidence to support arguments for more parental leave for fathers and for other measures that would increase the involvement of fathers in child rearing. They collected twenty-four of what they thought were the best studies of father involvement and children’s outcomes. The studies were longitudinal, meaning they followed fathers and their families over at least a year. Such studies are generally more persuasive than those that simply ask families about current or past practices in the home. And when the data from a number of studies is combined and analyzed together in what’s called a meta-analysis, it can sometimes produce clearer results than can any single study alone.

The researchers found a wide variety of beneficial social and psychological effects stemming from fathers’ direct engagement with their children. Children whose fathers played with them, read to them, took them on outings, and helped care for them had fewer behavioral problems in the early school years, and less likelihood of delinquency or criminal behavior as adolescents.

Among disadvantaged children born prematurely, those with engaged fathers had higher IQs at age three than those children whose fathers had not been playing with them or helping to care for them. Children with involved fathers were less likely to smoke as teenagers. And here was a particularly stunning result: fathers reading to seven-year-old girls and asking sixteen-year-old girls about school helped to prevent depression and other psychological ailments in the kids decades later. The researchers’ conclusion? Enough is now known about the positive impact of fathers’ presence on children’s lives that governments should start changing public policies to encourage fathers to spend time with their children.

Fathers’ importance in children’s transition to school, and their establishment of new relationships and friendships, was also explored by Ross D. Parke of the University of California, Riverside, who has focused largely on the social development of children. He believes that fathers play a central role in children’s socialization. In a 2004 study, Parke and his colleagues note that this key aspect of children’s development is linked to a network of relationships inside and outside the family. Fathers and mothers both influence children’s peer relationships, sometimes in overlapping ways. And children will be influenced by their peers, with whom they can have many different kinds of relationships. We want our children to be socially adept and well adjusted, and understanding how they form peer relationships can help us help them become more comfortable socially.

As far back as World War II, researchers noticed that U.S. children whose fathers were away at war when their children were four to eight years old later had problems with peer relationships. The same was true for the sons of Norwegian sailors, who were away for months at a time. Their fathers were not there to help them learn how to behave with others, and the children were consequently less popular and (hardly surprisingly) less satisfied with their relationships with their friends. In a separate study, one group of researchers watched fathers in their homes playing with their three- and four-year-old children. Teachers were then asked to rank the children according to their popularity among their classmates in preschool. Children of fathers who engaged in the most physical and enjoyable play had the highest popularity ratings.

Much of the evidence linking fathers to their children’s social competence comes back to the way they play with their children. You might notice a recurring theme here. Play changes as children grow older; tickling and chasing toddlers is gradually replaced by teaching kids to ride a bicycle, playing catch, riding roller coasters, and other more sophisticated kinds of play. (In my case, when my kids were teenagers and ready for Batman: The Ride at Six Flags, I was too terrified to join them. I still feel bad about that.) Play changes, but it remains a central part of the interactions between children and their fathers throughout childhood.

Ross Parke thinks the
way
a father plays is the key to healthy development in kids. He says that when fathers exert too much control over the play, instead of responding to their children’s cues, their sons can have more difficulty with their peers. Daughters who were the most popular likewise enjoyed playing with their fathers and had the most “nondirective” fathers. The children of these fathers also tended to have easier transitions into elementary school. Children whose fathers took turns being the one to suggest activities and showed an interest in the child’s suggestions grew up to be less aggressive, more competent, and better liked. These were fathers who played actively with their children, but were not authoritarian; father and child engaged in give-and-take.