I recently found myself thinking about a conversation I had
with a female participant in our REMix: Healthy Relationships in the Mix class.
She was talking about her child’s father, with whom she has had a strained
relationship for the past two years. She said, “He’s a waste of my time. I
don’t need him anyway. I can give my son everything he could, and more.” This
statement echoes a sentiment we hear often, especially with our female clients
- a sentiment that is often repeated both overtly and subtly throughout our
culture. When she made this statement, I paused and asked her if she thought
that was true of every family in her situation - can a mother give her children
everything and more than a father can? She replied with a definite “Yes,
absolutely.” I then went on to ask her if the same applies to men in her
situation - a father raising his child alone with no help from the mother. Can
he give his child everything and more than the mother could? Her response was
“Of course not. Every child needs their mother.”
I decided to pose these questions to the entire class, which
included mothers and fathers. We asked them to name all the things mothers can
do for their children. We then asked them to name everything fathers can do for
their children. To the participants’ surprise (but not to the facilitators’),
they listed the exact same things, maybe using a different word here and there.
The only thing they could name that a father cannot do is breastfeed. Then we
asked the question, “Do children need both their mother and father - or at
least trusted males and females - to be a part of their lives?” This question
was met with a resounding “Yes” from the group.
What do fathers and other male caregivers provide for
children? How do they do this parenting
thing differently than mothers? Do they have an important role to play in
their children’s healthy development? These questions are raised a lot in the
work we do with men. We’re always heartened when we hear our female clients say
things like, “I want him to be more involved; my child needs him.” Or, “My
father did so much for us; he would drop anything for us.” Unfortunately, for
every client that says fathers are important, we have two that say women are
always the better parent – and even sadder, many of our male clients are the
ones saying so.
So what do fathers bring to the table? Looking at the
research will show you that children who are raised by two involved, loving,
and stable parents are less likely than children raised by only one parent to
have behavioral problems, to drop out of school, to commit crimes as teenagers
AND as adults, to be abused and neglected, to use drugs or alcohol, and to
become sexually active at a very young age. They are more likely to do well in
school, have stable friendships, understand gender roles, live in stable
housing, attend college, and have positive self-confidence. Fathers and males,
in general, approach some of the same parenting tasks in different ways that
women. For instance, males are more likely to get down on the floor and play
with their children. They roughhouse more (which is a very typical male-bonding
approach). They are more likely to let their children take positive risks (“You
can climb a little higher. You won’t fall.”). They can let their children fail
and try to work out a task or problem on their own. And they often let their
children decide how they feel before reacting and helping them.
When we teach these concepts to fathers in our Focus on
Fathers classes, we can sometimes see the internal struggle going on in the men
who stated they believe mothers are better nurturers. They have been told all
their lives that men can’t raise children as well as women. Some have been told
by their own families and children’s mothers that their job is to make the
money and mete out punishments – the rest the woman can do, better. They get
excited to hear that getting on the floor and roughhousing with their children
helps the child control his or her emotions and provides bonding experiences,
especially for boys. They are happy that they can now put into words why they
don’t automatically intervene when a child is working through a problem. They
are relieved to be told that they can and should do things like sit down and
read to their kids, comfort them when they are sad or hurt, and show them how
much they love them. It’s a bittersweet thing to hear a man break down and say,
“Why have I been hiding behind this tough-guy façade with my son? He needs me
to talk to him, comfort him, help him with his problems. I needed all those
things from my father, but didn’t get them. Why hasn’t anyone ever told me this
before?” Our message is always the same: You are important. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
At the end of the REMix class, the young lady came up to me
and told me she had never had anyone dispute her beliefs that she could do it
all on her own. She was amazed and surprised to hear that the rest of the class
felt strongly that kids need positive male role models and admitted that maybe
she really couldn’t do it all as well as she thought. Over the next few weeks
she updated me on the progress she was making with her child’s father. She had
called him soon after that first session and agreed to let him see their son.
By the end of the twelve-week series, her son’s father was calling to talk to
them every night of the week and spending time with his son every weekend. She
said the changes in her son’s behavior were amazing – he was more compliant,
didn’t act out as much, was doing better in school, and just seemed all-around
happier… And so was she.
Written by Nichole E. Kang, Director, Social Services for
HPC’s Focus on Families program and facilitator of fatherhood classes for six
years.
