Why fathers are not necessary

Nor would the ominous statistics Obama reeled off about kids who grow up without Dad: five times as likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times as likely to drop out of school, and 20 times as likely to wind up in prison. Obama was citing a commonly accepted and constantly updated body of research. The effectively fatherless Obama is clearly a freakish outlier.

As for the rest of the fatherless: insufficiently breast-fed, apt to develop attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, unable to form secure bonds, lacking self-esteem, accident prone, asthmatic, and fat. Liberal feminist moms—eager for the participation of our emotionally evolved, enthusiastically diaper-bag-toting mates in the grueling round of dual-career child rearing—are keen to back the data.

Dads, we tell our husbands, are essential influences on children, the source of unique benefits. In the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family , Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, and Timothy Biblarz, a demographer from the University of Southern California, consolidated the available data on the role of gender in child rearing.

As Stacey and Biblarz point out, our ideas of what dads do and provide are based primarily on contrasts between married-couple parents and single-female parents: an apples-to-oranges exercise that conflates gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and biogenetic relationships in ways that a true comparison of parent gender—one that compared married gay-male couples or married lesbian couples to married heterosexuals, or single fathers to single mothers—would not.

Most of the data fail to distinguish between a father and the income a father provides, or between the presence of a father and the presence of a second parent, regardless of gender. Drawing on reliable comparative studies, you could say this: single moms tend to be more involved, set more rules, communicate better, and feel closer to their children than single dads. June 15, Do Fathers Matter? Highlights Print Post. Category: Child Care , Fathers , Parents. Related Posts. Brown and W. Bradford Wilcox.

Child Care , Public Policy , Religion. Parents , Substance Abuse. Divorce and Break-Ups , Fathers , Interview. Parents , Media and Technology. Public Policy , Parents. First Name. Last Name. Email Address. Institute for Family Studies P. Box Charlottesville, VA michael ifstudies. Contact Interested in learning more about the work of the Institute for Family Studies? Mailing Address: P. Box Charlottesville, VA info ifstudies.

Media Inquiries For media inquiries, contact Michael Toscano michael ifstudies. Children are wonderfully talented at weaving a tapestry for themselves with threads from various influential people in their lives: teachers, grandparents, clergy, friends, coaches.

And they can make a beautiful life, regardless of whether their biological father is one of the threads. The organization I founded, Single Mothers by Choice , is more than 30 years old now. We have seen a generation of our children grow up — and turn out just fine. Join Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on twitter. Topics: children , gender , parenting. In an age when more and more mothers are sole or primary breadwinners, do fathers bring anything unique to the table? Bradford Wilcox, National Marriage Project.

Terrance Heath, activist and writer.