Dads
may be participating more than ever
with moms in
helping raise their children, but they are still not
included in most studies
of children and their families,
“The
research has not kept up with the changes in society, with fathers
being more and more involved in
children’s lives,”
Moon, a clinical psychologist, told CanWest News Service.
“Almost all the previous
research has been conducted with mothers.”
Moon
is researching the parental response to a child’s pain, specifically if
fathers
react differently based on whether a son or a daughter is suffering.
She
discovered that the questionnaires and tests previous researchers
conducted all
excluded the responses of fathers, presumably because it was thought
that
mothers were the primary caregivers.
Men’s
issues author Warren
Farrell was not surprised by Moon’s observation. He contends
that
society’s view of fathers is 50 years out of date. “The sexism against
men is
so great we don’t even think of them,” Farrell told CanWest.
Yet
Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute
of Marriage and Family Canada, told Today’s
Family News the evidence is growing that
fathers have a
vital role to play in bringing up their children. For example, they
promote
their child’s development through physical activity, and they can play
a
critical role in their education.
“For
far too long, the need for a father in a
child’s life has
not been well understood,” said Quist. “Moms and dads both play
important roles
in the raising of their children – but they are often different roles
and one
cannot substitute for the other.”
As family expert Patrick Fagan with the
Washington-based
Heritage Foundation concluded, “teenagers
without a dad around are
almost twice as likely to be depressed as teenagers from an intact
married
family. They are more than four times as likely to be
expelled from school and
three times as likely to repeat a grade. Drug and alcohol abuse is much
more
common. On top of that, they are also more likely to have
sex before they are
married – setting the stage for yet another fatherless generation.”
