The Role of the Father in the Family
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Graeme Russell, The Role of the Father in the Family, bahai-library.com.
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The Role of the Father in the Family

Graeme Russell
published in The Family: Our Hopes and Challenges

Roseberry: Association for Bahá'í Studies Australia, 1995

If I was giving a talk to a group of students at university I would
probably start it out with something like: "Once fathers were neglected but now they
are the subject of intense research". Up to a point this is true. The research
interest in fathers only started about 20 years ago. You can probably trace this back to a
few important publications in the middle to early 70s.

One of the more critical books on fatherhood says that "...the
contemporary literature reveals a new maturity. Fathers are now accorded serious attention
in textbooks on socialisation. Theorists and researchers ponder the patterns of influence
within the family rather than independent maternal and paternal effects, and parenting
manuals are directed to a mixed readership of mothers and fathers." I think we should
accept that with some caution. I don’t think things have moved as much as we think
they have. There is certainly more interest in fathers, but the research interest has not
been there as strongly as I would have thought, given how it started in the early 70s.

What I want to do is just quickly go through an outline of certain
areas of research into fathers. What is fathering about? What do fathers do?

Diversity of Fathering

With women we now accept diversity. That’s a fairly important step
in terms of recognising that people have different needs, different values and so on. We
are not in quite the same ball park with regard to fathers and men. The range includes the
highly nurturant and involved, the "new father", "single fathers" and
"traditional fathers" (in the sense of how we conceptualised the father before.)
I think that we’ve probably been a bit more critical of the traditional father
who’s in the paid workforce and doesn’t share much in the domestic work at home.
I just read an article in the New Yorker where a new group of fathers are being very, very
critical of the emphasis on this new age, more nurturant and involved fathering, saying:
"Hey, that’s not what fathers were meant to be. They were meant to be
disciplinarian, the person who was a little more aloof in the family." I notice that
in the research as well.

There are also fathers who are non-custodial fathers within the context
of the Family Court decision and they are a fairly important group. And I think it’s
also important to recognise that there is a group of disengaged physically and sexually
abusive fathers in our society. We as men have not been as prepared to accept more general
responsibility for some of the family violence and sexual assault, and to look at ways of
improving that situation. There are also the cultural and age differences.

Most of the research has really been done on white middle class
fathers, so we don’t know a lot about the diversity of fatherhood. I am continually
confronted by the diversity in fatherhood because of my involvement in running support and
information groups for fathers and parents.

Beliefs and Feelings

There are also issues concerning beliefs and feelings about being a
father. I think we sometimes make assumptions that fathers don’t feel very much at
all about being a father, and I’m continually surprised when people try to explain a
lot of men’s behaviour by a feeling of threat to their power. Some of that is true.
Also, though, some of what men do in relation to their children comes from very
deep-seated feelings they have about their children which they have not been able to
express. I see that sometimes, when men are threatened with not having contact with their
children. People are too willing to jump in and interpret it in that ‘power’
domain, rather than perhaps saying : "Wait. This guy might have very deep feelings
about his children and that might help explain some of his behaviour."

Roles and Responsibilities

If I ask an open-ended question of a father: "What do you see as
being your roles and responsibilities as a father?", about 60% of fathers will,
within the first sentence, say something about breadwinning and earning income. I do a lot
of research about men who spend a lot of time at home, and that’s an issue for men
whether they’re at home because they’re unemployed or home by choice. It’s
an issue they have to deal with in terms of their personal identity. I think it’s
still the case that men’s identification still revolves around paid work more than it
does around family life. The majority of men, though, say that they would prefer to spend
more time with their children if they had the opportunity to do it, but I’ll point
our later that there are some real barriers for men to become more involved.

Involvement

Fathers can be competent care-givers. They can care for children - it
might surprise you.

Fathers spend much less time than mothers in day-to-day care-giving,
even when the mother is employed full-time. There is some evidence though that in younger
families where you’ve got younger children fathers are doing more than they did in
previous generations when you’ve got both parents employed, but it’s still
nowhere near 50/50.

They spend the greatest percentage of their time in play with their
children. For a long time researchers thought that this was just play, in other words
fathers weren’t doing the ‘real’ things with their children, they
weren’t care-giving for them, they weren’t changing nappies, they weren’t
bathing them and so on. They were just playing with them. There is now strong research
evidence that shows that the style of play that fathers engage in with their children,
which is often more of a rough and tumble, to-and-fro type play, is strongly related to
competence with peers in pre-school. It’s early days yet for us to be concluding from
this, but it seems that some of the things that fathers are doing with their children are
having a greater impact than we previously thought.

Fathers spend more time in triatic than diatic contexts (research
jargon). They spend more time in a family context having 2 or 3 people around as well as
the father, than in diatic contexts, ie: a one-to-one relationship with a child, and when
I run groups for fathers one of the things I suggest is that they might spend more time
alone with individual children to develop those relationships. In 1% to 2% of families
fathers share equally in day-to-day caregiving. In about 5% to 10% of families fathers are
highly involved on a day-to-day basis. (I’m using very high standards for
‘highly involved on a day-to-day basis). Men are spending more time at home caring
for children, but the shift in housework isn’t as great. The "new and involved
father" is becoming more common, but there is argument in the literature about
"how common?", "what this indicates?" and so on. So some people have
coined the phrase "the in-principle man". The principle they are in support
of,but in practice, not at all.

One of things that we’ve found in our research is that men are
very highly involved in making decisions in families, or being consulted with regard to
making decisions, and that’s something we hadn’t picked up on earlier, because
we were just asking ‘Who does what?" The involvement in decision making is a
critical predictor for their well-being, how they feel about themselves and how they feel
about their family life, and that’s true in those shared caregiving families where
men are at home or caring for children as well. Those men get more irritated by the fact
that they are not given the space to make the decisions. It is a fairly difficult thing
for women in that situation to give a bit of space. But I don’t for a moment agree
with the recent emphasis on women as "gatekeepers". I think that tends to lay
blame on women for not allowing men to get space. The difficulty that women have in
sharing space, and giving up the idea that they should be the primary caregiving parent
all the time, is a real issue, but there is another side to it as well. Men can get over
that barrier by having the techniques to do it.

Factors Associated With Men’s Involvement

What factors have been associated with men being more highly involved
in family life, and particularly caring for children?

Attending the birth, although now that the majority of men attend the
birth that probably won’t be shown in future research.

Having more information about child development and having had the
opportunity to learn care-giving skills. There is research that shows that if men are
given the opportunity to learn care-giving skills, say in a hospital situation, they will
be more involved afterwards.

Having less stereotyped masculine self-concepts. Men who feel more
confident with their identity, placing less emphasis on the social construction of
masculinity, are also more likely to be involved.

Being employed in jobs that are less demanding. The work/family
interface is a fairly critical factor here.

Having spouses who encourage involvement and consider their partners to
be competent parents.

The partner relationship is fairly critical. I sometimes have people
say to me "How did you become involved in this to begin with. I was not a new age
guy. It was more the case that my wife encouraged and supported me).

There are factors during the pregnancy period that do facilitate men
becoming more involved. Where people have gone through a process of trying to stay
together as a couple eg attending doctor’s appointments together and things that are
psychologically orientated towards having a baby, it’s in those families that you
find fathers are more highly involved. Being a researcher, I add a caution that because
these studies are really not great longitudinal studies, it really does not allow us to
address the question of cause and effect. There may be other factors causing this. But at
least at the moment we have a set of relationships that we think might be able to direct
social policy.

Benefits of Involvement

One of the things that comes through very clearly in the research is
that there are enormous benefits for men themselves in getting involved with their
children. Shifting the emphasis towards fathers being highly involved is not going to
create ‘super kids’. There are obviously some positive processes going on when
you have two parents who are actively involved and care, but if I had to take a very
critical review of all the work that’s been done I think that the benefits are
greater for fathers than anybody else. They get a greater sense of satisfaction, a greater
sense of contribution and stronger relationships with their children. It’s the
increased depth of the relationship with their children that turns out to be more critical
than anything else. Obviously there are benefits for women as well, but when it’s all
filtered through it’s for fathers more than anything else.

Practices and Policies

I think it’s necessary to establish a set of working principles,
and that’s what I’ve done with my research. Sometimes I get challenged by people
who say "Some of what you say is not supported by research" And I have to say
"That’s true because the research hasn’t been done". What I’ve
rather done is to start out with a set of basic ‘human being’ principles,
primarily around rights and responsibilities for both mothers and fathers to share in the
nurturing, as well as the things that go on outside the home. The basis of that is that
the well-being of mothers, fathers, children and employers in society would be enhanced by
a better balance between paid work and family life for fathers, and there is a need to
improve the parenting opportunities for fathers.

The barriers to fathers becoming more involved are more significant
than we sometimes think. The services that people provide for parents are not particularly
father-friendly. Practices and policies are based on traditional assumptions, and not
based on the presumption of shared responsibility.

Changes are needed:

Firstly, recognise the diversity. Give more attention to
father’s feelings, his needs for support and support groups for men. Once you start
that process men will talk, will share feelings and will feel comfortable. It’s a
matter of providing a forum for that.

Evaluate the arguments about time spent with children. I believe that
quantity time is important to get quality time. Having the time is critical, and when I
work with men I often go through how they use their time, and encourage them to put
greater priority both on time with their children and partner time.

Develop family-enhancing employment policies.

Provide parent-education programs for fathers.

Give more attention to couple-relationships. This is fairly critical
in negotiating all of these changes.

Critically evaluate the approaches to services.

And finally, more research is needed.

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-- The Role of the Father in the Family (Used by permission of the curator)