There are two diametrically opposing views about the importance of fathers in the lives of their children.

On the one hand, you have the fathering groups, like the Centre for Fathering here, founded by, you guessed it, fathers. So, you pretty much know what is on their agenda.

On the other hand, you have Louise Sloan and others like her who, to put it bluntly, pretty much reduce a father’s importance to his contribution in a cup. Louise Sloan is the author of “Knock Yourself Up: No Man? No Problem” and a single 44 year old who gave birth to her son, Scott, through artificial insemination. She is quoted as saying, 'Independent women today are not prepared to sit dolefully on a shelf as their fertility runs out. Nor are they willing to settle for Mr You'll-Have-To-Do or "accidentally" get pregnant by a lover reluctant to commit. That’s a good thing. That is something we should celebrate.'

Bypassing the emotive arguments, let us try to get a handle, and an objective handle at that, on the relevance, or otherwise, of fathers. Why? Because society has seen a tremendous increase in societal ills in tandem with a proportionate increase in the number of single parents (read mothers). Is there a link? Also, because there are a whole lot of us out there who would say that fathers are important but would be a little more hard put to describe exactly how.

Well, many of the answers can be found in the enormous amount of research which has been done over the last few decades and which can give us a much clearer idea of fathers and their varied roles in the lives of their children.

A father’s place in society

In general, one might say that society does not put the same value on the role of fathers compared to that of mothers. One could even say, that the role of the father is underestimated by society, by women but most particularly, by men themselves. In general, men appear to be unaware of their importance as fathers, abdicating their role in their children’s lives to the mothers, or limiting their role to the financial provider of the family to the extent that to all intents and purposes, they are fathers absent in substance in the lives of their children.

Sloan’s book was met with a storm of vehement criticism when it came out, with Sloan hailed as 'the epitome of selfishness' and an 'upper-middle-class white woman pursuing her pregnancy fantasies by making consummately selfish choices'. But the reality is that there are increasingly more women in the world who, with the luxury of education, economic means and medical know-how, are making a conscious choice to embark on single motherhood.

Single motherhood

Whatever the circumstance or motivation, the number of single mothers is on the increase. In the UK, about 82,000 single women over 30 had a baby in Britain last year. Nearly 2,000 children are born every year in the UK using donated eggs, sperm or embryos. More than a quarter of families in Britain are classed as single-parent. Teenage mothers make up 3 per cent of lone parents at any one time, while three in five single mothers have previously been married to their children's fathers. The number of women in England and Wales not registering the father's name on the birth certificate has risen from 28,000 in 1988 to nearly 50,000 in 2006. Last year, one in seven left the box under 'Father' blank¹.

In the US, the figures on single mothers are even more alarming. From Ann Coulter’s book, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America, she reports that "Of all single mothers in America, only 6.5 percent of them are widows, 37.8 percent are divorced, and 41.3 percent gave birth out of wedlock. The 6.5 percent of single mothers whose husbands have died shouldn't be called 'single mothers' at all. We already have a word for them: 'widows.' Their children do just fine compared with the children of married parents." However, according to Coulter who quotes from the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, children from single-parent families account for 63 percent of all youth suicides, 70 percent of all teenage pregnancies, 71 percent of all adolescent chemical/substance abuse, 80 percent of all prison inmates, and 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children².

This disturbing tableau painted by these statistics gives an inkling of the importance of fathers in their children’s lives. It suggests to us that the importance of fatherhood is not a cry from right-wing conservatives but is a fact born out time again in the many studies that have been conducted in the last few decades and which bear having the spotlight turned on them.

The dual dimensions of a father’s contribution

One dimension of a father’s contribution, one could infer, even without the support of statistics, is that fathers are important to their children’s well-being because their presence in the lives of their children imply a more stable background. It might be stating the obvious, but fathers constitute one half of the committed relationship between the parents which is the basis of a stable family structure.

The other dimension of a father’s contribution is through his uniquely masculine role, a special and unique role in the development of his children which no woman, no matter how loving a mother, can substitute for.

The economic well-being of the child

The enormous and long term importance of a father’s contribution to economic security of the family is reflected in those children who grow up with their biological father, being more likely to find employment and achieve stable economic status than their peers who grow up in single parent families³.

The corollary of this is that, as Powers⁴ showed, boys who grow up in fatherless homes drift about and have trouble making a commitment to any kind of work, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Both boys and girls of father-absent divorced families are more apt to drop out of school⁵.

The emotional, intellectual and cognitive development of the child

Research has shown that a father’s presence is crucial for the emotional stability of the child. A father’s masculine role in the family, whereby he counterbalances the feminine nurturing role of the mother, cannot be replaced by a woman. The father teaches the child, especially boys, to control impulses and to learn and respond to the laws and rules of society. As the man of the family, he lends firmness and weight to the supervisory role of parents, which we will see later, is the single most important factor in determining juvenile delinquency.

The father also lends a stable counterbalance to the vital, emotional relationship between mother and child, serving as a buffer to the mother’s attention and emotions (both affection and anger) that might be otherwise too heavily focused on the child, offering the child another reference point and a haven, as well as helping the mother avoid over-emotionalizing her relationships with her children. This is crucial in helping the child to later separate and individuate from the mother in its process towards maturity⁶.

He is also a facilitator of intellectual and cognitive development when children are younger, as well as a facilitator of behavioural control⁷. A warm loving father has been shown to be a major contributor to a child’s academic performance and social competence, and the degree of a father’s warmth, but not a mother’s warmth interestingly, was found to be associated with less disruptive aggression towards peers⁸.

In addition, many studies have shown that a warm and loving father is a major contributor to a son’s masculine identity, a protective factor against homosexual tendencies. Curiously, this finding was dependent on paternal warmth, and was independent of the father’s masculinity^9,10.

The important common finding of these studies is that it is not his mere presence but the father’s acceptance or warmth or love towards the child that was the crucial factor.

Children who grow up with a loving father-child relationship have been shown to have a greater sense of security and higher self-esteem which are protective factors against depression in young people, the various forms of anti-social behaviour including delinquency, criminal behaviour, drugs and substance abuse, and promiscuity in girls (see below “Social behaviour”). They also are more likely to demonstrate a higher sense of social responsibility, higher need achievement, higher academic achievement, and are more likely to be able to commit to work and to relationships.

Social behaviour

The father has also been shown to be crucial for sons in terms of helping them develop a strong sense of social responsibility by being a strong socializing influence. This has been a crucial factor in helping boys avoid criminal and anti-social behaviour, drugs and substance abuse. A depressing study cited in the far left-wing Village Voice found that U.S. children brought up in single-mother homes "are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.”

Fathers have an equally vital role to play in the socialization of their daughters. They are instrumental in developing in their daughters, a healthy sense of the value of their feminine identity and therefore of their self-worth. A good father-daughter relationship is a strong protective factor against poor self-esteem in girls, promiscuity, daughter depression and suicide.

a. Delinquency

H. Wilson in a major study in England in 1980 examined boys growing up in inner city and suburban areas and tested juvenile delinquency against parental strictness. It was interesting that the study showed that the delinquency rate in lax families was 7 times that of strict families, and yet the delinquency rate in socially handicapped families and those with a criminal record was only twice as high as the comparison group. Her conclusion was that “the most important single factor in determining juvenile delinquency” was supervision. Many social scientists have commented that supervision, especially of boys, is difficult for single mothers since children see their fathers as more powerful and threatening¹¹.

b. Criminal behaviour

There are many, many studies linking fatherlessness and criminal behaviour. 90% of major and violent crimes in the US are committed by unmarried men¹² , most of whom come from father absent family backgrounds. Some of these studies based primarily in the US include Gove and Crutchfield¹³, Harper and McLanahan (2004)¹⁴. A tragic but true observation made often is that the prisons in the US are essentially buildings to house fatherless young men.

These statistics are not just an American-Anglo phenomenon but are reflected world-wide. Veneziano et al in 1998, did a cross cultural comparative study of 32 societies representing the world’s known and adequately described social-cultural systems and found that the lack of the father’s warmth predicted a young man’s interpersonal violence.

c. Drug and substance abuse

Another form of anti-social behaviour strongly linked to father absence is the use of drugs and substance abuse. In the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators referred to above, children from single-parent families account for 71 percent of all adolescent chemical/substance abuse.

d. Promiscuity

For girls, fathers play an equally important role. It has been shown that girls without fathers have a general anxiety about self-worth and male evaluation. This has led to increased promiscuity amongst them, a lack of independence, lower cognitive capacity and a lack of impulse control. Girls with absent fathers have also been shown to have a higher incidence of depression, suicide and poor self-esteem. The early sexual behaviour and promiscuity of girls without fathers is interpreted as a search for male affirmation which they did not get at home^15,16. ,

Why is a good father-child relationship so important in the socializing of the child? Perhaps the answer comes in part from Wallerstein in 1980 who noted from her studies on the psychological effects of divorce that “children who felt rejected by their father were burdened in their psychological functioning despite the presence of a good mother…good father-child relationships appeared linked to high self-esteem and the absence of depression in children of both sexes and at all ages.” So it would seem that the father-child relationship is at least as important as the mother-child relationship in the development of high self-esteem which is fundamental to the healthy behavioural development of a child.

Irreplaceable Dad

From all the research referred to above, we can see clearly that a loving mother even with the best of intentions, cannot replace the many important and unique contributions that a father, as a man, makes to the general well-being of the family and his children, which the mother, as a woman, cannot substitute for.

For all these reasons, and many more which are beyond the scope of this article, the father plays a unique and irreplaceable role in the lives of his children. The presence of Dad in the family has a major positive effect on the whole of family morale. The mother feels supported, protected and affirmed as a woman and mother; and the children feel safer and protected. This is born out by logic and research¹⁷.

We cannot underestimate the importance a child places on being accepted by its father. It is a telling statistic to note that children of widowed mothers do as well as children of married parents, and much better than their counterparts of single mothers. The understanding by this child whose father has died, is that though he is not able to be with the child, he or she has not been abandoned by or rejected by him. It would appear that a father’s importance is so imperative that better a dead father, than an absent, neglectful one!

The upbringing of children is a task that is supremely challenging and which requires the complementary yet different roles of both the father and mother. One of the most important things a child learns in order to be a well-functioning human being, is how to be a full member of its own sex and yet at the same time, fully relate to the opposite sex. As the prominent American anthropologist, Margaret Mead wrote, “This is not an easy learning [and] requires the continuing presence of a father and a mother.” One might add that in all the other aspects of a child’s development, this continuing presence of both father and mother would seem equally crucial.

Children are a gift, not a right. And when they are born, they are entitled to know, to be brought up, to be loved and to be taught to love by the two people who gave life to them. We are happy when we learn to truly love and are loved. Children learn to love and be loved in a home where the model of love is displayed for them through the rich, committed love of their parents. All the love of a good mother, even with the best of intentions for her child, can only be one half of the richness which is parental love and which should be the child’s right to call his very own.

“So Dads, …you think you are important?”

“Darn right you are!”

Audrey is the editor of Family Tone.