“Father Facts,” 4th
edition. By Wade F. Horn, Ph.D. and Tom Sylvester. Gaithersburg,
Maryland: National Fatherhood Initiative, 2002. 182 pages. No price
information.
www.fatherhood.org. 301-948-0599.
“Father Facts” is an almanac
chock-full of invaluable graphs, charts, quotations, and statistics,
all relating to fatherhood. It is not the sort of book you actually
sit down and read from cover to cover, but in going through it I
learned many fascinating things about fathers and children. The
introduction sets the tone well. The National Fatherhood Initiative is
one of the less radical father’s advocacy groups, devoted more to
expanding father presence in their families than to agitating for fair
judicial and social treatment of dads. Lead author Horn is of course
now the Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and
Families within President Bush’s Department of Health and Human
Services. The authors note that the decades-long rise in father
absence has stopped. “For fatherhood, it seems to be both the best of
times and the worst of times,” in that fathers who are with their
children spend more time with them than they used to, but at the same
time millions of children miss the regular presence of Dad. Following
the introduction, the “Top Ten Father Facts” are usefully tabulated on
page 15, including the fact that “the best predictor of father
presence is marital status. On page 159, this is more specifically
explained: the most important determinant of whether a father lives
with his children is his marital status when the child is born.
Interestingly, adopted children do
better than natural born children on virtually every scale, presumably
based on the higher average social class of adoptive parents. On page
147, we learn that sustained contact with Dad is the strongest
predictor of a son’s self-esteem, while the most important single
factor for daughters is physical affection from their fathers. In both
cases the crucial nature of Dad’s role is evident. In fact, as the
authors write on page 16, some studies have shown that father love is
a better predictor than mother love for certain outcomes including
absence of delinquency and conduct problems, absence of substance
abuse, and overall mental health and well-being. Other research has
discovered that after controlling for mother love, father love is the
ONLY relevant predictor of psychological adjustment, conduct problems,
and substance abuse. Forensic psychologist Shawn Johnston is quoted on
page 106 as saying, “The research is absolutely clear… the one human
being most capable of curbing the antisocial aggression of a boy is
his biological father.” On page 154, research is cited showing that
contrary to popular opinion, mothers and fathers are equally sensitive
to the needs of infants and preschoolers. David Blankenhorn pungently
comments, “What magnifies the risk of sexual abuse for children is not
the presence of a married father but his absence.”
But what is it about Dads that
they have such great influence over their children’s success and
happiness? Joseph H. Pleck, a pro-feminist researcher with whom I have
often found myself disagreeing in the past, has these sensible words
to say: “Children learn critical lessons about how to recognize and
deal with highly charged emotions in the context of playing with their
fathers. Fathers, in effect, give children practice in regulating
their own emotions and recognizing others’ emotional cues.”
”Father Facts” is admirably organized into nine parts with suitably
arranged sections and sub-sections. While there is no index, a
detailed table of contents is all we really need to find whatever we
might be seeking. In a book this length, occasional sour notes are
inevitable, as in the German study mentioned on p. 172 where 92% of
German men said they would be most unwilling to part with their cars,
while only 51% said they would be most unwilling to give up spending
time with their kids. This begs several unanswered questions: Were all
of these men fathers? And did they need their cars to support their
kids? To spend time with them? But this is a minor quibble. This book
fills its role wonderfully. I highly recommend picking up a copy.
©2000 J. Steven Svoboda
