Better late than never. This article could have been gleaned word for word from GlennSacks.com pieces over the past few months (New York Times, 11/2/09). They didn't mention us, so I'm sure it's all original material. I wonder if their other writers will read it and remember what it says the next time they're moved to produce the type of anti-dad screed that seems de rigueur at the "paper of record."
It's a good piece. It even discovers Sara McLanahan and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study that I've reported on several times. McLanahan is excellent herself and everyone should know about the Fragile Families study, so I'm glad the article gave a link to it.
For the most part, it takes off from the recent study done by child psychiatrist Dr. Kyle Pruett and colleagues into parenting outcomes using a particularly rigorous method of involving low-income mothers and fathers in California. I reported on that study in September here. And in keeping with Pruett's take on the study's results, the article establishes some basics about fathers and their ways of relating to their children and vice versa.
Without using the term, it deals with maternal gatekeeping and points out that (a) mothers should back off and let children and fathers be together, (b) the fact that dad may do things differently from mom is OK and (c) fathers parent differently from mothers.
Fathers tend to do things differently, Dr. Kyle Pruett said, but not in ways that are worse for the children. Fathers do not mother, they father.
Dr. Kyle Pruett added: “Dads tend to discipline differently, use humor more and use play differently. Fathers want to show kids what’s going on outside their mother’s arms, to get their kids ready for the outside world.” To that end, he said, they tend to encourage risk-taking and problem-solving.
So the article lets its readers know that men and women parent differently and each is necessary to the child's ability to become a whole person and one capable of withstanding life's slings and arrows.
And it goes a bit beyond maternal gatekeeping to the kind found in the broader society.
Uninvolved fathers have long been accused of lacking motivation. But research shows that many societal obstacles conspire against them. Even as more fathers are changing diapers, dropping the children off at school and coaching soccer, they are often pushed aside in ways large and small.
“The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women’s magazines in the waiting room, the mother’s name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door,” said Philip A. Cowan, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who along with his wife, Carolyn Pape Cowan, has conducted decades of research on families. “It’s like fathers are not there.”
The key to good parenting according to Pruett's study is the parent's getting along with each other. As a practical matter, they need to negotiate parenting styles in non-confrontational ways.
The article is in the Health section of the Times and therefore deals with social science. It has nothing to say about the law and the seemingly infinite variety of ways it separates children from their fathers. But for what it is, it's an excellent piece.
Here at GlennSacks.com we spend a good bit of time criticizing the Times, and with good reason. But the writer of this piece, Laurie Tarkan, well deserves our appreciation.
