HEALTH PLUS:The more a father is involved with his children, the greater their intellectual competence, capacity for self-control and their self-esteem, writes MARIE MURRAY
FATHERHOOD IS changing. Former negative narratives of the authoritarian, absent, feckless, violent father of Irish literature are happily being replaced by understanding of the degree to which men are committed, caring, nurturing parents.
The modern father need not be consigned to the margins of family life as earner and authority figure, but is claiming his right to be actively involved with his children in ongoing interactive relationships with them in their daily lives.
Paternal roles are being redefined. In terms of father-son relationships, the historical obsession with son and heir, with perpetuator of the family name, business or trade, has been superseded by understanding that choices are individual. It is possible for the eldest son, carrying his father’s name, to step into another career or profession if that is what his heart desires.
In father-daughter relationships, men are recognising their daughters’ equal entitlements to education, career and to liberation from negative or restrictive gender discriminations.
Family is a new place where role definitions are being redefined. Even the notion of father as provider and decider has been changed. Fathers may not be the primary bread-winners, but may be home caretakers. They may work part-time or full-time.
Job loss need not banish them to “joblessness” without a positive role as it did in former times. Marital and parental roles within the home are no longer dominantly societal prescriptions, but are worked out by the couples themselves.
The event of fatherhood, which used to be announced to fathers in maternity hospital waiting rooms or at the other end of a phone, is now something in which fathers are participant at all stages of pregnancy and birth.
Even fathers’ testosterone levels have been found to decrease during the weeks after the birth of their child, thereby increasing the capacity for gentle attention and attachment to their offspring at this crucial time.
Fatherhood helps promote men’s understanding of themselves, their willingness to understand others, to extend their capacity for empathy and self-expression, and even to promote effective, supportive leadership qualities in men by increasing intuitive behaviours.
And if fathers need children, children need their fathers. Research shows that the more a father is positively involved with his children, the greater children’s intellectual competence, their performance at school, their capacity for self-control and their self-esteem may be.
For children who have fathers who show appropriate interest in every level of their development, know they are valued and valuable. How could children not have self-esteem when they are nurtured with love and respect?
Fathers play differently with their children; while mothers tend to fulfil a more protective, risk-awareness role, fathers engage in more rough-and- tumble play in ways that foster children’s sense of competence, independence and empowerment.
Children learn what to expect from male relationships in adulthood from their relationships with their fathers. How young men behave as husbands and fathers is shaped by their own experience of being parented.
How young women expect to be treated by husbands is shaped by their experience of how their fathers treat them. Boys learn how to be men by observing their fathers, and girls learn how men should be by watching their fathers.
This is their model of masculinity. This is their social, gender, work, relationship and family model of fatherhood.
To be dismissed by a father, to be rejected or neglected or treated inappropriately, is, psychologically, to be dismissed by the world of men. This is what makes fatherhood so important, or in the absence of a father, the importance for children having other appropriate positive and secure male role models in their lives.
The presence of men and women in children’s formative years play an important part in determining their relationships in life. And while there are distressing pockets of deprivation in which children have no positive paternal presence in their childhood and adolescence, with mothers who struggle alone or in serial short-term partnerships that bring instability to developing years, there is increasing recognition of the importance of fatherhood.
Fatherhood is special and precious and deserves all the support, recognition and encouragement it can be given.
Clinical psychologist Marie Murray is director of psychology in UCD Student Counselling Services