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J. Steven Svoboda is a member of TheMensCenter Advisory Council, an Independent attorney active in human rights law and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC).
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By J. Steven Svoboda... |
“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. .
“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
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