Fathers are drifting away from their children
in a wide range of circumstances. About half of American marriages are
ending in divorce; in some 90 percent of divorces, mothers are awarded
custody of their children, whose contact with their fathers drops off
at a staggering rate. Only one-sixth of all children will see their
fathers as often as once a week after a divorce, and close to one-half
will not see them at all. Ten years after a divorce, fathers will be
entirely absent from the lives of almost two-thirds of these children.
About 30 percent of children are now born to unwed parents. While
children of divorce typically have a tie with their fathers that is
severed, most children born to unwed mothers never develop this tie at
all.
There is, to be sure, great debate about
whether this is in fact a great loss to children. Many women clearly
view men not as partners in raising children but as another caretaking
responsibility—or as outright abusive and destructive. And claims of
the fatherhood movement notwithstanding, there is a paucity of solid,
large-scale research demonstrating that children are damaged when they
have little or no contact with their fathers.
Yet several small studies do indicate a
significant correlation between fathers' level of engagement and
children's emotional health and cognitive development. Many children
clearly miss their fathers and feel stigmatized by their absence—the
children say so—although the degree to which children feel stigmatized
varies widely by culture and community. And there remains a strangeness
in even asking whether fathers are important to children. Would we ever
ask this question about mothers? To argue against reconnecting fathers
and their children is to deprive children of the opportunity for a
unique and profound human tie.
There may also be substantial monetary value
in keeping nonresidential fathers engaged with their children. A
significant correlation exists between fathers' amount of contact with
their children and the payment of child support. (The causal
relationship, however, is unclear. Are fathers who are engaged more
inclined to pay child support, or are fathers who pay child support
more inclined to be engaged?) Child support is no small concern given
that about 41 percent of divorcing men walk away without a
child-support agreement, and even when child-support agreements are in
place, nearly 50 percent of all fathers renege on the full amount.
Children are almost twice as likely to be living in poverty after their
parents divorce as before.
The problem is not simply a matter of the
evaporation of nonresidential fathers. Even when fathers do live with
their children, large numbers are emotionally remote and function as
appendages to mothers in the basic care of children. To be sure, the
entry of women into the full-time labor force has changed this some.
The percentage of children whose fathers cared for them during their
mothers' working hours increased from 15 percent to 20 percent from
1977 to 1991. But a good deal of research now shows that while fathers
may still play important roles—as breadwinners, as supportive partners,
as role models in certain respects—mothers, on average, spend
substantially more time with children. Moreover, while some fathers
spend a good deal of time with their children playing, watching
television, or engaged in other activities, in the vast majority of
households, it is still mothers who maintain the infrastructure of
children's lives. It is mothers who know what time to give the
antibiotic, what stuffed animal must be packed, where the lost sock is.
One informal survey asked fathers and mothers their children's shoe
sizes: 90 percent of mothers answered correctly, and 10 percent of
fathers did.
When it comes to basic child care, Scott
Coltrane observes in his book Family Man: Fatherhood, Housework and
Gender Equity, most fathers tend to "wait to be asked" and to "require
explicit directions." Coltrane adds, "[M]ost couples continue to
characterize husbands' contributions to housework or child care as
'helping' their wives." The roles of fathers and mothers, to be sure,
don't need to be identical. But it would make the lives of large
numbers of women far easier if fathers took on more of the hard work of
parenting. It seems likely that it also would benefit children—widening
their sense of their own possible roles and identities, reinforcing
their notions of equity and fairness—to see their parents sharing the
parenting burden.
Marginalizing Dad
There are assorted complex reasons for
fathers' marginal roles. Variations depend in part on race and culture.
Studies show that some men have little contact with their children
because they are working long hours, while nonresidential fathers often
have little contact with their children because they are ashamed of
their unemployment or underemployment.
The nature of a father's relationship with
the mother and the mother's attitude about the father's involvement
strongly predict both residential and nonresidential fathers' degree of
engagement with their children. Because some women do not view fathers
as competent caregivers, they very explicitly seek to limit a father's
role in direct caregiving.
Some psychologists now argue that depression
is as common among men as among women—it's just more disguised among
men—and depressed fathers may be less likely to struggle through the
obstacles and wounds that separate them from their children. The irony,
of course, is that a man's failure to develop close relationships,
including with his children, may well be a prime cause of his
depression.
About four years ago, I became alert,
however, to a very different kind of reason that fathers remain such a
slight presence to so many children. My wife and I were in the
emergency room with my son, then three years old, who required stitches
for a head wound. The pediatrician and the nurse caring for him—both
entirely lovely, competent people —gave directions to my wife about how
to tend to his wound. Not once did they make eye contact with me. Soon
after, I was bringing my older son to school, and his teacher asked me,
"Would you tell Avery [my wife] to make sure to pack an extra pair of
shoes tomorrow for Jake [my son]?"
I am not making the bizarre claim that
teachers or health care providers are discriminating against fathers.
They are only responding to reality, to the fact that fathers are
commonly peripheral to the basic care of children. My point is simply
that many of those in the community who interact with families are
inadvertently reinforcing a set of expectations of fathers that is
dismally low, expectations that get men off the hook for the hard work
of parenting and in some cases fail to communicate basic moral
responsibilities. The great majority of fathers have been perfectly
willing to oblige. My point is also that with little effort, a
community's professionals could send quite different and powerful
messages to fathers. What if my son's teacher had simply asked me,
"Would you make sure to pack an extra pair of shoes for Jake tomorrow?"
Nor would it be hard to change routine
bureaucratic habits and symbols that routinely convey low expectations.
Noncustodial fathers, for example, are rarely sent report cards or
invited to parent-teacher conferences or school assemblies and
graduations. Fathers are rarely asked to volunteer in schools or to be
class parents.
In producing a video regarding
African-American men in health care systems, James May, director of the
National Fathers Network, observed that health care professionals
typically ask mothers 90 percent of the questions regarding a child's
care, even though both parents are in the examination room. Rarely is
eye contact made with fathers. "Mothers are seen as the designated
experts," May says. "When fathers come to an appointment by themselves,
professionals tend to ask, 'Where's your wife?'" We have come light
years from the days when fathers were not allowed in birthing rooms,
but the notion that not only bearing but raising children is
fundamentally a female responsibility is encoded in our most basic
health care symbols. As Felton Earls, a family and community researcher
at the Harvard School of Public Health, points out, we still have
departments of maternal and child health, not departments of parental
and child health.
The marginal role of fathers is reinforced in
many other ways that would not be difficult to change. The wide gamut
of parent education programs in health care, child care, and other
community settings still tend to be geared to mothers'—not
fathers'—needs and concerns. The birth of a child is clearly a crucial
time for fathers to attach to their children, yet Lamaze classes tend
to be tuned to the peaks and valleys of feeling that women, not men,
are likely to experience. Common male struggles—such as the worry the
baby will rob them of the mother's focused attention and love—are
ignored. A friend of mine pointed out another Lamaze class oversight
that commonly causes men to feel rejected and to become detached: "If
Lamaze classes were really concerned about men, they'd talk to them
about the fact that their wives are not going to be much interested in
sex for about six months after the baby is born."
Dads Can Do More
It is crucial to distinguish the notion of
communicating high expectations from the growing tendency to celebrate
men who have any involvement with their children. A small number of
schools and various community groups around the country are now
periodically holding "dad's days" and other father events in which a
child brings a father or significant male figure to a school or
community activity, as a way of encouraging fathers to engage with
their children. Yet the notion of celebrating these fathers for
appearing at school for a single day reveals how little is really
expected of them. Schools should communicate that ongoing engagement is
presumed, as it is for mothers. These father events also understandably
often rile mothers and deepen the divide between mothers and fathers.
One school principal who holds a popular dad's day told me that mothers
regularly complain to her that there are no days designated to
celebrate them, even though they're doing all the parenting work.
For a few years, I volunteered at my
children's school once a week and was praised by school staff for
making this commitment. When I told this to my graduate students, one
was brave enough to say to me, "Men volunteer in their children's
school once a week, and they expect to get a trophy. What do women get
who do this all the time?" Celebrating fathers may be a necessary first
step in engaging them, but institutions should do it in the context of
high expectations of fathers' day-to-day contributions to child
raising, and they need to be equally vigilant and energetic about
celebrating mothers.
These changes in institutional practices will
not, of course, change fathering practices overnight. The fact that
baby stations are now in men's restrooms in airports and some other
public places has had both symbolic and practical importance, but I
rarely see men using them. A friend recently told me that he was in an
airport restroom and sure enough, a baby station was unfolded and a man
in a business suit was standing in front of it. But there wasn't a baby
on it. He was interacting deeply with his laptop computer.
To dramatically raise the number of fathers
who are meaningfully involved in the care of their children requires
taking on huge and complex problems. It means improving men's
employment prospects and adopting policies that change workplaces so
that fathers can expand their parenting role—including paternity leave,
flexible scheduling, company-based child care, and reasonable work
loads. It means focusing mediation programs and parent and family
support programs on helping couples manage their acrimony in ways that
keep fathers involved with children. Many current fatherhood programs
and initiatives fail because they skirt the hard issues—issues of work
and love—that so commonly rend fathers from families. It means teaching
young men, starting in junior high school, both about the
responsibilities of parenthood and about its wonders. It means guiding
parents in talking to their children about these things as well as
using mentoring programs and other community interventions to regularly
communicate the message and to model responsible fatherhood.
The media and celebrities, too, could do much
more to promote a culture of responsibility for children among men.
Actor and singer Will Smith's song "Just the Two of Us" celebrates not
fathers but the treasures of a father's day-to-day involvement with his
child. Why not do a public service announcement with Michael Jordan
holding a baby, explaining the magical capacities of infants and
encouraging fathers to spend time with their babies? Filmmakers and
television producers have long recognized the potency of children and
single fathers. My Three Sons, Bonanza, Kramer vs. Kramer, Sleepless in
Seattle, My Girl, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid
are but a few of a long list of popular portrayals of fathers
struggling solo to raise children. But these shows and films tend to
heroize fathers for doing the things mothers routinely do. Fathers need
instead to routinely see themselves in television and films, without
any fanfare, managing alongside mothers their children's daily lives.
At the same time, more people need to wake up
to this crisis—if women were so disconnected from their children, we
would see our country as fundamentally awry—and nonresidential fathers
need to be reminded, repeatedly and forcefully, about their basic
obligation to provide for their children. (A colleague recently
reviewed a proposal to a foundation to put the names of "missing"
fathers on beer bottles. I can't see beer companies seizing on the
idea, but it does make the point.)
Yet important as these strategies are,
especially in combination, they will never achieve their full might if
fathers fail to redefine their parenting role, and fathers are unlikely
to redefine their role if it is not consistently expected of them in
their day-to-day interactions. If we believe that it benefits children
to have fathers engaged with them—and engaged in many aspects of their
lives—then that needs to be reflected in the institutions that help
raise children and support families.
This article is reprinted from The American
Prospect.
