Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked (25 page)

Galinsky thinks this situation can be changed, but only if change occurs “at all levels—from individuals’ attitudes about work and family to effective workplace design and cultural change that dispel the mystiques for both men and women.” The new male mystique, she says, “is harming men much in the ways that the feminine mystique harmed women.”

The difficulty that fathers face trying to fulfill what they see as their responsibilities at work and at home generally turns out to be greater than they expect. During the third trimester of pregnancy, men and women both say that they expect women to be responsible for more of the baby care than fathers. But when their babies are six months old and they are asked again about the division of labor, most say mothers are doing even more than they had anticipated—and fathers are doing even less. The need for men’s earnings to support the family often pushes couples in this direction, and fathers are often uncomfortable with it. A father in one study expressed frustration that his wages didn’t seem to “count” as a contribution to the family as much as he thought they should. His wife’s friends, he said, sometimes ask her why he doesn’t spend more time with the baby. “Man, I’m looking after [my daughter] six days a week, ten hours a day, busting my ass at the plant,” he said.

One consequence of the work-family conflict, according to Annette Lareau, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, is that some men are indeed strangely detached from their families. Lareau and her team made repeated visits to families with kids in the third and fourth grades and interviewed the parents and children to try to determine the role of fathers in those families. They soon learned that interviewing the fathers was going to be more difficult than they’d anticipated: the men just didn’t know much about the details of family life, even if they spent a lot of time with their families. Lareau found that fathers “were a powerful presence in the household” who “provided affection, humor, and advice to their children.” But they had a hard time answering some simple questions, and they said they often relied on what their wives had told them. In one interview, a father is shown a list of children in his son’s class and asked which parents he knows. He says that some of the names sound familiar, but he isn’t sure. Referring to his wife, he said, “Harriet could tell me the ones I know.” It wasn’t that he didn’t know the families; he simply couldn’t remember exactly who was who.

Despite these lapses, which occurred frequently among the fathers in her study, Lareau found that fathers were not only important in family life, they
dominated
their families. “Fathers added color, fun, informality and ‘accent’ to family life. Mothers were likely to worry, chastise, and punish. Fathers were playful … We were repeatedly struck by the ways in which the fathers who participated in our study enlivened and lightened the tone of family life.” Fathers also collaborated with mothers in teaching their children what Lareau calls “life skills” that wouldn’t necessarily be taught in school. Fathers stressed the importance of masculinity and physical prowess, and they showed particular interest in children’s athletic development over the kids’ school, homework, and friendships. Fathers also taught their children—especially boys—how to fix things.

Fathers also grapple with social attitudes that suggest that stay-at-home fathers can’t provide the same quality of parenting that stay-at-home mothers do. Victoria Brescoll and her colleagues at the Yale School of Management have collected attitudes on parenting and found significant stigma associated with nontraditional roles. With more women working, you might think that women who stay at home aren’t viewed as favorably as those who are employed, but Brescoll found otherwise. Stay-at-home mothers and working fathers were viewed more favorably by the families in her studies than working mothers and stay-at-home dads. This could explain why many fathers take only some of their paternity leave (if they’re lucky enough to get any) or don’t take it at all; for men there is still a stigma associated with staying at home with children—even temporarily.

Furthermore, the participants in her study didn’t express any embarrassment or hesitation over these views, which suggests “that these biases or beliefs about stay-at-home dads and working moms are strong, and people don’t feel bad about having the bias,” she said. “If a father is a breadwinner and they’re both working, and he’s pitching in as much as she is, I think people would feel that’s fine, because he’s still making money.” But if he’s working part time and doing a lot of child care, people will judge him. The stereotypes remain; the first thing fathers have to do is to prove they can support the family financially.

*   *   *

Many attitudes and circumstances influence what a father does at home, but one of the most important is what’s often called maternal gatekeeping—the controversial notion that women might block men’s participation in housework and child care. Despite the move of more mothers to the workplace and greater interest among men in spending time with their children, mothers still do more of the housework and child care in the home. It could be that mothers and fathers are still partly ensnared in traditional views of gender roles. But there is reason, according to some researchers, to think that some mothers are preventing fathers from becoming more involved.

The roots of this dynamic extend back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when men began to work in factories and women became the experts in running the home. This breakdown of roles was still in place in the 1960s, when the feminist movement began to challenge these gender stereotypes. But the movement of women into the workplace and the trend toward fathers doing more at home have not changed the fact that women still do more of the work at home. “Some women both cherish and resent being the primary caregiver and feel both relieved and displaced by paternal involvement,” one study concluded. Many mothers say they would like fathers to be more involved in child care, but some reports suggest that as many as 60 to 80 percent of mothers
do not
want their husbands to be more involved in child rearing.

Accusing women of keeping fathers out of family life is a serious charge, because it blames women for undermining their own progress toward a more reasonable division of family responsibilities during a time of dramatic change in the workplace. But there is evidence to support it. And some of the best evidence comes from Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan of Ohio State University and her colleagues.

They asked ninety-seven couples about their child-rearing beliefs before their first child was born, surveying them afterward, and observing them at home with their new babies. Schoppe-Sullivan found that mothers did play important roles in both encouraging and curtailing fathers’ involvement. And their gatekeeping was a powerful force: even fathers who wanted to be involved with their kids often drifted away in the face of persistent maternal criticism. Encouragement clearly proved to have a more powerful effect on fathers. “Mothers can close the gate, but they can also open the gate,” Schoppe-Sullivan said.

When she asked couples what kind of parents they wanted to be and later compared that to the kind of parents they became, she found a poignant discord. Some of the couples eagerly looked forward to sharing parenting—but it didn’t happen. The roles become more traditional. Mothers generally assumed the larger role, and both were disappointed with that outcome. These mothers, Schoppe-Sullivan explained, are not consciously trying to shut fathers out. It’s just something that happens. And one important reason is that life after the arrival of a newborn often doesn’t meet parents’ expectations.

In addition to helping explain how fathers behave with their kids, the findings say something more broadly about marital satisfaction. Many parents report a downward spiral in marital satisfaction after their children are born, and the division of household labor and chores can undergo a major shift. If their arrangement was working well before the birth, it might suddenly deteriorate in the face of all the new responsibilities, from taking care of a larger pile of laundry to arranging for child care.

Many parents plan to do a better job of sharing responsibilities after the baby is born, but not all of them succeed. Parents lose much of the time they had spent together before the baby—no more running out to catch a movie or a drink after work, no more lingering over a relaxing dinner. Dinner is now more likely to be something you try to cook, eat, and clean up before you collapse into bed, exhausted from work and caring for the children. These things—some of them trivial, others substantial—can shake the foundation of a marriage. And this is one of the biggest threats to committed and involved fatherhood.

*   *   *

Throughout this book, we have tried to determine what fathers contribute to their families by looking closely at families through the eyes of anthropologists, geneticists, and psychologists, among others. They have told us a lot about fatherhood. But there is an entirely different way to look for fathers’ contributions—and that is to look at families in which the fathers are absent. Some authorities believe this is a severe social problem with harsh consequences for children. Others suggest that fatherlessness, as it’s often awkwardly called, is not nearly so harmful.

The first question we should ask about father absence is: How widespread
is
it? I found the answers to be shocking, almost unbelievable. Depending on which study you look at, between one-quarter and one-half of the American children of divorced parents never, or almost never, see their fathers. One-third of all children are born to parents who aren’t married, up from 6 percent in 1960. Some of those couples will stay together, but many won’t.

All the current figures are far higher than they were only a few decades ago. In 1960, only 11 percent of U.S. children lived apart from their fathers. By 2010, that figure had climbed to 27 percent. (The share of children living apart from their mothers rose from 4 percent to 8 percent.) It’s no surprise that fathers who live apart from their children spend far less time sharing meals, helping with homework, and playing. About 40 percent of nonresident fathers say they are in touch with their children several times a week by e-mail or phone. One in five say they visit more than once a week, and 29 percent see them at least once a month.

Fewer fathers are living with or are in touch with their children now than at any time since the United States began keeping relatively reliable statistics. Those fathers who are separated, divorced, or never married—but who see their children regularly—are not likely to be involved in monitoring them or setting and enforcing rules, meaning they are not really playing a parental role. And we’ve made little progress in understanding why so many fathers live apart from their families—and what we can and should do to change this.

In chapter 6, I discussed a study of hunter-gatherer groups that found that fathers had little or no effect on mortality rates among their children. Researchers have also looked at the consequences of father absence in the United States and have come to a different conclusion. One study done in the state of Georgia found that children born to unmarried mothers with no father listed on the birth certificate were two and a half times more likely to die within a year of birth as children born to married women who listed a father. Unmarried mothers are more likely than other mothers to live in poverty, so it could be primarily economic circumstances, rather than fathers’ absence, that are responsible for the additional deaths (although these two are often linked). But when researchers did an analysis that eliminated some of the economic factors, they still found that children with no father on their birth certificates were twice as likely to die as children whose fathers were named.

Multiple studies suggest that fatherlessness is a major contributor to crime and juvenile delinquency; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse, and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty. That list comes from David Popenoe of Rutgers University, who says the decline of fatherhood “is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society.”

The National Fatherhood Initiative, an organization founded to study fatherlessness and encourage father involvement, has looked closely at some of the data linking fatherlessness to adverse consequences for children. With regard to delinquency, it has found that the closer adolescents feel to their fathers, the less likely they will be to engage in delinquent behavior—such as stealing, running away, disorderly conduct, violence, and the use of weapons. Relationships with mothers are important, too, but the emphasis on fathers is especially so in families in which the fathers live apart. The NFI has also looked at the evidence linking father-adolescent relationships with drug abuse, and came to similar conclusions. The influence of peers was a factor in drug use, but adolescents who had good relationships with their parents had less need to seek outside relationships that could lead to risky behavior.

Popenoe says the evidence is overwhelming that “on the whole, two parents—a father and a mother—are better for the child than one parent.” He acknowledges exceptions, which include disastrous two-parent families and devoted single parents who can raise healthy, fulfilled children. But the exceptions don’t invalidate the rule. Popenoe believes that in gay and lesbian couples, one usually fills the “male” role and the other the “female,” but he acknowledges there isn’t enough data on child outcomes in these families to know how much that matters.

The most important and immediate consequence of fatherlessness, in his view, is the loss of economic resources. When families divorce, household income falls and expenses rise. Two homes cost more than one, and divorce does not come with an increase in parents’ wages.

It’s not surprising that many other researchers have criticized this point of view. Divorce and fathers’ absence often follow an extended period of conflict between the parents, and it’s possible that the
conflict
, not the father’s absence, is responsible for some of the children’s problems. And separated families may be different in some other, unknown way from families that stay together.