Good news for kids: Fathers playing a bigger role in their lives

From changing diapers and reading books to sharing meals and carpooling, fathers' involvement in their children's lives continues to expand beyond the role of playmate, a CDC survey finds.

|
Patrick Semansky/AP
A father and his son ride a sled down a hill after an overnight snowfall in Baltimore. According to a government survey released on Friday, the detached dad is mostly a myth. Most American fathers say they are heavily involved in hands-on parenting, the researchers found.

There’s growing awareness that children generally benefit from a father’s involvement in their lives, and a new statistical portrait shows that fathers – even those who don’t live with their children – are taking on more than just the role of playmate.

Ninety percent of fathers living with children under age five said they bathed, diapered, dressed, or helped them use the toilet every day or several times a week in a survey report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly a third of men not living with their children did the same.

The report offers a detailed portrait of how frequently fathers have meals with their preschool and school-age children, read to them, play with them, take them to activities, and talk with them.

Decades ago, research on fathers largely focused on their absence – measuring the negative outcomes for children whose fathers did not live at home. But that has shifted to “more thinking about the unique influences fathers might have,” and this report is “more affirmative in asking fathers about what they actually do,” says Ben Gorvine, who has researched fatherhood as a senior lecturer in psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

The results come from a nationally representative sample of fathers between the ages of 15 and 44 who were surveyed between 2006 and 2010 about their activities with children in the previous four weeks. Fathers were defined broadly to include men who have stepchildren or adopted children or are living with a partner’s children.

During the time of the survey, about 23 million men in the age group examined were living with one or more children, and 7.5 million were living apart from one or more of their children – with about 5 percent fitting in both categories.

Among fathers with children under age 5:

• 72 percent who lived with children fed or ate with them daily, compared with 7.9 percent of those who did not live with the children.

• 81 percent of co-residential fathers played with their children daily – and another 18 percent played several times a week; 4 out of 10 non-co-residential fathers played at least several times a week.

• 60 percent of co-residential dads and 23 percent of non-co-residential dads read to their kids at least several days a week.

Among fathers with children between the ages of 5 and 18:

• 93 percent ate meals with them at least several days a week if they lived together, 16 percent if they did not.

• For helping with homework at least several times a week, the respective figures were 63 percent and 14 percent.

• For talking with their children about their day at least several times a week, the figures were 93 percent and 36 percent.

• And for taking children to and from various activities at least several times a week, the figures were 55 percent and 11 percent.

The level of involvement in most categories is up slightly since a similar survey in 2002.

“You could still make the case that moms take on more of the load, but the trend for the last several decades is that fathers’ involvement is increasing,” Northwestern’s Mr. Gorvine says. Encouragements such as better paternity-leave policies in workplaces seem to be contributing, he says, but many fathers, despite growing involvement, “still have a sense that this is not something they know how to do very well.”

Less than half the fathers living with their children (44 percent) rated themselves as doing “a very good job” as a father; among those not living with the children, only 21 percent rated themselves so favorably.

The report offers demographic details as well. For example:

• Among fathers ages 22 to 44, those with more education were much less likely to have had no meals with their non-co-residential children in the previous month than those with a high school diploma or less (33 percent vs. 54 percent).

• 66 percent of Hispanic fathers not living with their children under age 5 had not bathed, diapered, or dressed them in the past four weeks, significantly more than the figures for African-Americans (34 percent) or whites (39 percent).

• Older fathers were more likely than younger fathers to read to the children they lived with daily.

• Fathers cohabiting with their partners were more likely (30 percent) to have not read to their children at all in the past four weeks, compared with married fathers (12 percent).

Fathers, meanwhile, sometimes just need support to navigate their role.

“They don’t really want to just make a baby and be gone … but sometimes they don’t have a job and there is shame … or some might do well financially but don’t know how to engage with a child,” says Carey Casey, CEO of the National Center for Fathering, a nonprofit in Kansas City, Mo., that offers resources and training.

An innovative Co-Parent Court in Hennepin County, Minn., has seen some success in its efforts to encourage more involvement by low-income, unmarried fathers. Instead of just being asked to pay child support, parents are offered a series of workshops and assistance developing a co-parenting plan.

A recent University of Minnesota 3-year study found that fathers who completed the program paid 17 percent more child support than a control group and reported greater satisfaction with their involvement in their children’s lives; parents’ relationships improved; and mothers reported a greater increase in the time fathers spent with the children.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Good news for kids: Fathers playing a bigger role in their lives
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/1220/Good-news-for-kids-Fathers-playing-a-bigger-role-in-their-lives
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe