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8. American Decrease of the Father Figure

In todays society it is not unusual to be a part of a single-parent household. In the time span between 1960 and 1990, there were significant findings that revealed a decreasing rate of fathers in a family home. In-between this time period, the span of three decades, “the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent.” This increasing rate of a decreased father-presence in the household tremendously impacted children and would continue to negatively impact their lives if the rate continued to decline. “If this rate continues, by the turn of the century nearly 50% of American children will be going to sleep each night without being able to say goodnight to their dads.” This trend, beginning in the 1960s, was not expected. 

The reasoning for these departures were branched from many different motives from married couples; however, the main force driving fathers away was due to divorce (others can be military, death, or desertion). In 1974, “more marriages ended in divorce than in death” and this pattern has not declined. When two individuals get divorced, the biological parent that obtains full custody of the child is “nearly always the mother.” This can be due to many different factors; however, “men are not biologically as attuned to being committed fathers as women are to being committed mothers.” This reveals that a father’s role and impact in the child’s development is the main part of life the child lacks the most in their developing stages of life. Many of the “attention-grabbing issues that dominate the news”, such as, “crime and delinquency; premature sexuality and out-of-wed-lock teen births; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse, and alienation among teenagers; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.” A father’s presence for a child’s full social and cognitive development is important; therefore, being fatherless is not beneficial for a child.

8.1 Major Consequences of being Fatherless

• American

                 Without a father in a child’s life, they go through many developmental changes that can negatively effect many aspects of their life. Culture and biology are two driving factors that create a father’s impact on a child’s life to be different than a mother’s impact. In the American culture, fathers “are more active and arousing in their nurturing activities, fostering certain physical skills and emphasizing autonomy and independence.” The decision-making in children is found to be altered from the lack of these father-child interactions. Ronald J. Angel and Jacqueline L. Angel, sociologists from the University of Texas, have shown that fatherlessness is a “mental health risk factor for children.” They have shown through studies that a child’s social development is hindered without the physical interactions that a father gives a child. These impaired social developments have the ability to lead children to be “three times more likely to have a child out of wedlock, 2.5 times more likely to become teen mothers, twice as likely to drop out of high school, and 1.4 times more likely to be idle.” A father has a very important role in how their children choose what is important in their life and how children interact with their peers.

There is also a diminishing cognitive piece to these children’s lives. The article by Marybeth Shinn, reveals that fatherless families “is often associated with poor performance on cognitive tests.” One of the most unique findings was that fatherless children would score “relatively low quantitative and high verbal scores on aptitude tests.” This observation concludes that a father’s impact is different than a mother’s. A father brings different values and skills into a child’s life and without their impact a child could have lower developmental areas of performance. Any reduction of interaction with parents has the ability to decrease a children’s cognitive development.  However, not all of the cognitive withdrawal is directly correlated to the fathers lack of interactions. Other data from this article show that the external environmental changes such as the role of anxiety and financial problems increases the decreased test scores as well.

Studies done in the study that support these findings:

Study by: Blanchard and Biller

Who: “44 working-and lower-middle-class 3^rd grade boys”

Family life of the different groups:

·            “11 father absent before age 5”

·            “11 father absent after age 5”

·            “11 low father present”

·            “11 high father present”

Results: All of the 10 achievement scales were scored higher on by all the participants with a father present. There wasn’t a unique difference in the scores when comparing them between the two different fatherless groups; therefore, revealing that there is a significant difference in the cognitive development of children who grow up with or without a father.

Study by: Jaffe

Who: “8^th grade black students from Detroit”

Family life of the different groups:

·            "Father present and employed"

·            "Father absent, family dependent on public assistance"

Results: “The father-present group was superior.”

This further exemplifies the importance in a father being present for the cognitive development of the child.

Also, an income and poverty deficit will have negative influences on the child as well. It is said that “the child poverty increase of recent years is due mainly to a single factor – the retreat of fathers from the lives of their children.” Also, the chance of fatherless children living in poverty “is five times greater than that of children growing up in intact families.” These low income levels impact the education of children in these single-household families. Most families that have a low-income from a single parent has a higher risk of their children going to “lower-quality schools, to live in lower-income communities with fewer educational resources, to have fewer after-school lessons and extracurricular activities, and to have lower educational aspirations.” All of these factors can correlate to a lesser chance of a college education and a lower change for a positively impactful external society. These situations affect the child in the present situation, but also impact their future life on their own.

• Norwegian

The study by David B. Lynn and William L. Sawrey identifies how Norwegian boys and girls are affected by their fathers being absent during wartime. They focus on Norwegian sailor families specifically.

They took “80 mother-child pairs from several neighboring small towns and their environs in a typical sailor district in Norway.” Half of the 80 mother-child pairs had father-present families and the other 40 had father-absent families. The father-absent group had to have an absent-father for longer than 8 months at a time. All of the participants went through interviews that asked about the family dynamic, including being asked to recreate a drawing of their household.

Findings in the Study:

·            “father-absent boys would show more immaturity that the control boys”

·            Father-absent boys had stronger “strivings for father-identification.”

·            “A significantly higher proportion of father-absent than control boys showed poor peer judgment.” The boys that were fatherless were more affected by this peer choice than the females.

·            “Father-absent boys were not as firmly identified with masculinity as were control boys.”

·            When the female sex doesn’t have a male father figure they “continue to progress toward psychological maturity” because they gave “increased dependency on the mother.”

These results reflect a more social evaluation of Norwegian boys and girls due to fatherlessness. It underlines the fact that male children not having a father creates them to have a lack of identification with themselves. They tend to do more searching for identification of masculinity than actually creating their own personal achievements for themselves. They grow up in confusion and must search on their own to find their niche.

As for fatherless Norwegian girls, they do less searching for their selves due to their same sex parent still being in the household. They are highly attached to mothers because they are feared for their absence; however, their developments aren’t as altered because their identity isn’t being questioned.

• Study with British Children

Study by: Douglas, Ross, and Simpson

Who: “3,526 British children born in 1946 tested at ages 8,11, and 15”

Family life of the different groups:

·            "165 father absent due to death"

·            "118 father consistently away from home versus both parents present"

Results: The scores of children that correlated with the fathers being absent (but not dead) “consistently deteriorated" .16 SD units for girls and .14 for boys between ages 8 and 15.” The children that had a father die were not affected if the father did not die from a “prolonged illness.” This shows that father-absentness had an effect on the children.

9. Father-infant bonding (Aka father bonding vs. American father bonding)

      Infants can become attached to their fathers. Mother-infant bonding has been a common focus in household research; however, “an increasing number of studies in the United States and Europe have tried to understand if and when infants become attached to fathers.” After psychological studies were done it was shown that infants do create a bond with their fathers “and that the infants become attached to fathers at about the same age as they do to mothers (8-10 months of age)”. The ways in which this bonding occurs has been questioned due to different roles fathers have in various cultures. Questions arise about how fathers have the ability to bond with children if they do not have the same kind of role that mothers do in the baby’s development.

American/European Father-Infant Bonding

European and America fathers are seen to have more of an aggressive and vigorous relationship with their child. This doesn’t mean harmful; however, it means there is physical and “highly stimulating” interaction between the father and child. This gave the child emotions that reflected an exhilarating and fun-loving experience that allowed them to create a father-infant bond different than a mother-infant bond. It is shown that “an infant by two or three weeks displays an entirely different attitude (more wide-eyed, playful, and bright-faced) toward his father than to his mother.” This shows that a father being present gives the child a variety in the way they interact with different people. The rough housing doesn’t just have importance towards the bonds the children make with the father, but also help to teach them lessons about a variety of important life lessons. Rough play helps to teach “self control”, helps “children learn how to express and appropriately manage their emotions, recognize others’ emotional cues, and understand that biting, kicking, and other forms of physical violence are not acceptable.” This form of bonding between the father and infant creates a bond that is unique. It allows the child to learn valuable lessons, while also being in an environment that enhances all of their senses and allows them to intensify their relationship with their father.

Aka Father-Infant Bonding

                 The Aka’s are a hunter gatherer society “in the tropical rainforest of southern Central African Republic and northern Congo-Brazzaville.” The was they form their father-infant bond is very different than that of the Europeans and Americans. While they focus on rough playing, the Aka’s “rarely, if ever, engage in vigorous play with their infants.” Aka fathers are always around their infants when they are born. They always sleep with their infant and are “within an arm’s reach of” them for “more than 50% of 24-hour periods.” Overall, Aka fathers “have a much more intimate role in infant care than fathers in the United States.”

The four factors that are key for Aka father-infant bonding:

1.        “Familiarity with the infant”

·            Aka fathers are more around the child than most cultures. They hold the child often; therefore, they learn important signs the child shows that most fathers would not. For example, they know “early signs of infant hunger, fatigue, and illness.”

2.        “Knowledge of caregiving practices”

·            Fathers understand when to be more playful, when to be more physical, how to correctly “hold and infant”, and “how to soothe an infant.” They understand all of the interactions that are needed in taking good care of a child.

3.        “The degree of relatedness to the infant”

·            The father understands how to make a bond with the infant. They know if the infant needs more rough play or soothing. They play large roles in caretaking, so they understand the infants needs at another level.

4.        “Cultural values and parental goals”

·            The Aka’s are “gathering-hunting population”; therefore, animal hunting is not a sufficient or main way that they obtain food. This means that the males do not play a large and main role in going out and hunting for the tribe or their own families. This allows the father to be able to spend more time with the infant and really create a bond with them. This creates a father’s role in child upbringing an important aspect of the Aka culture.