Gender roles and the importance of fathers

There is rigorous debate in our culture about gender roles,
including the appropriate roles of the mother and father in raising children. We are all now aware
that mothers can do a lot of what fathers used to do, and fathers can do a lot of what was
historically “mother’s work.”  There is a new flexibility to gender roles. It is essential to
celebrate each of these advances.

At the same time, mothers and fathers are also “naturally
different” and are thus “naturally needed”? in a child’s life. Remove one parent’s core strengths,
and problems can occur. For instance, when scientists study what happens to children whose fathers
are not active in their lives, they find a higher probability of mental, emotional, and social
problems.

Boys without the substantial presence of a father are 70 percent more likely to
commit violent crimes, and each year spent without a dad in the home increases the odds of future
incarceration by 5 percent.

Girls without the substantial presence of a father are 150
percent more likely to become pregnant during the teen years and will experience 92 percent more
marriage breakups than girls raised with two parents.

Both girls and boys raised without
fathers are substantially more likely to be sexually abused than their peers in two-parent
homes.

This doesn’t mean that every father (or mother) is good for a child, nor that there is
fault in being a single parent. Many children are being raised wonderfully by single mothers (and
single fathers), people who are adapting heroically to circumstances in their lives.