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The problem is, of course, that this reaction is not so much about me as it is
about societal gender norms and resulting expectations of what a family and
its constituent parts should look like. These are the standards that see dads
looking after their own children described as babysitting while mums are
met with raised eyebrows for daring to venture outside for an evening.
the foundations for a society that says the best citizens are raised by
heterosexual, anodyne parents who spend the entirety of their offsprings
And theyre the stereotypes that I fear research released this week by Oxford
University could be used all too easily to reinforce.
The study, published in the journal BMJ Open, uses data from the Avon
Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to analyse the influence of
fathers on the behaviour of their children at various points in their lives.
Ultimately, say the researchers, the children of fathers who are confident
and secure in their parenting role and who form an early, strong bond with
their offspring are less likely to experience behavioural problems in later
life.
So far, so agreeable: good fathering, in short, has a positive impact on the
children benefiting from it. A focus on the role of fathers is also refreshing
amid decades of research and conjecture culminating in a creative
range
end up in sth
of ways to criticise women for the raising of their children. On top of which,
at a time of a widely acknowledged masculinity crisis, reassurances about
the positive effects of mens emotional availability should be welcomed.
These findings, though, are framed in terms that are all too familiar, and
frustratingly convenient for a sexist status quo. The conclusions, for
example, are said to suggest that it is psychological and emotional aspects
of paternal involvement in a childs infancy that are most powerful in
influencing later child behaviour and not the amount of time that fathers
are engaged in childcare or domestic tasks in the household.
With 1.8 million single mothers in the UK, it seems time to look past a
storybook male breadwinner for the answers.
For all the discussions of objectivity and neutrality associated with scientific
research, it remains the product of the society in which it exists. Families
come in many shapes and sizes in 2016, but traditional gender
roles endure. Mothers deserve better than the restrictive yet
overwhelming expectations they are laden with; fathers deserve better than
the patronising one-dimensional image of them as cavemen unable to
grapple with domestic life.