I. Theoretical Positons and the Intellectual Environment

Even for those fathers who want to be heavily involved in the lives and development of their children, they will tell you there is social pressure (they might not use the phrase, but that's what they mean) making them keep their distance. In many ways, it is still a traditional world for them too. While there has always existed some fathers who were involved in the development of their children, the norm historically has been that fathers take an Instrumental Approach to family life in general, and to fathering in particular. Instrumental simply means task oriented (i.e., provider, breadwinner, disciplinarian). Mothers, by contrast, take an Expressive Approach (i.e., nurturant, forgiving, loving, caring). This is the Yin & Yang of Talcott Parsons (1954), a very traditional sociologist who was prone to very traditional sociological explanations. Parsons would explain that these traditional behaviors for parents were social structures that best served the necessary functions for society.

Nobody really likes the structural-functional approach to describing, explaining and predicting behavior, because it relies heavily on believing in and trusting in the status quo. In addition to this gem for explaining why fathers remain traditional, which is often detrimental to their children, the Parsonian view also lead to a particularly wrong-headed explanation of leadership at high levels of social organization called the Davis-Moore Hypothesis (Davis, 1945). This was a widely accepted idea that followed along the lines of "cream rises to the top", and which stated that society is structured so that only the best and brightest come to head large corporations, top positions in government, and excel in every profession.

One big problem with this notion is that there weren't any women among the best and brightest. Therefore, one would have to conclude, women were simply inferior to men when it comes to big idea implementation. Still, as we saw in the first chapter, people change depending on the economic and political conditions of the times. And while many fathers are resistant to tradition, most simply submit to it still.

Today, when asked to describe themselves and their lives, the general population of fathers mention parenting only 30% of the time; while mothers mention their children and parenting almost every single time they are asked. Actually, parenting tends to be third on the list of "important things in life" for fathers, coming behind Wife and Occupation. For mothers, the order of important things is children, husband, other family, and then occupation. Is this the way society wants it to be? Since we can't ask society directly, we look at indications - such as the number of times the family orientation of men is profiled in the media compared to women.

When the first woman Attorney General of the United States, Janet Reno, was appointed to office, the news was very quick to point out that she had never been married and had no children. However, we've never been told about the marital or parent status of Warren Christopher (Secretary of State), or any of the other male appointees. We do know about Henry Cisneros (HUD Secretary), but only because he was embroiled in a minor sex scandal. The males are billed as experienced leaders, and exciting administrators with vision to lead us into the future. Janet was described as an experienced leader and an exciting administrator with vision, but she's never been a wife or mother! This kind of gender bias isn't the most serious sin committed by the media, but it has negative effects in the long run.

Income generation is still the most important duty of fathers today, although a very vocal minority of males might have us think differently. The pressures of daily life to insure economic provisions for the family are very great - it is virtually the only avenue for failure in the traditional sense - failure to make a living. Males see their contribution to children's development: as a role model for competitiveness, the work ethic, independence & leadership, and moral values.

Traditional fathers are firm, demanding, authoritarian and possess most of the power in the family. Their male children are alleged to be more self-confident and assertive. The male is supposed to be strong, decisive, protective of the female, who is weak, indecisive, yielding. At least, that is the stereotype. And is works for a while, as long as fathers stay around to be protective (Don't forget we have a 50% divorce rate in the U.S.). In terms of parenting, father's play and promote spontaneous activities with their children - whenever they have the time and wants to play. Most of the time, they are working. To increase involvement in parenting comes at a certain cost to career and financial security of the family. In other words, there's a little Willie Loman in every father.

II. Androgynous Fathers: The new father will be more androgynous according to the more positive social critics. He will be more of a mixture of traditional masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgynous fathers will tend to protect their children from the influence of sex-role stereotyping. The AndroDad will know how to mother and father children. Today's typical fathers are playmate/disciplinarians with their children. They may espouse equalitarian values, but their behavior fails to follow the values they express. The dominant value expressed by couples today is one of equalitarian roles, or a joint partnership in the tasks surrounding family life. However, when questioned further, fathers fail to do even 25% of the cooking, cleaning, parenting, nurturing, and care giving necessary to raise up children to independence. Only a minority of fathers really do take an equal share of the child care.

It's lack of information and social permission that keeps males involvement to a minimum. The Prototypical Androdad is a college graduate who makes a moderate income and has flexible work hours. His wife is a full time employee with similar working conditions. Again, there is insufficient social structure in place to allow very many fathers this opportunity.

III. The Development of American Males from Birth to Adulthood.
Several events have taken place over the last half of the twentieth century that have reshaped the role of father, as he relates to his wife and children. First, fatherhood today is a matter of degree of involvement in the family. Generally, fathers have always been available to "take up the slack" when mothers were unavailable to care for children, but men have never before been expected to be competent in the role of caregiver, enforcer of homework performance, first aid giver, or nurturer. 

Patriarchy Then and Now
Working backwards from the 19th century, "modern" world history should be seen as being dominated by the traditional male - a form of power known as patriarchy (definitions - A social system in which the father is the head of the family and men have authority over women and children such that a family, community, or society based on this system or governed by men).  Like most things, patriarchy is neither good nor bad in and of itself.  For people who believe, very often with the strength of deific beliefs or religious training to back them up, patriarchy has served as a the main organizing point for all of society. Men have their work to do, women have theirs - each thinking their work is more important to society than the other's, and each knowing that survival of the family depends on the quality of work from each side.  Thus men work outside the home to provide security for the family, women work inside the home to use that security wisely and carefully.   Obviously such a division of labor and power has served the purpose of bringing humanity and civilization to the present day.  Patriarchy has many critics, again as is the case with most traditional interpretations of power and privilege. 

Social Events, however, and not mere sociological interpretation, changed the world of parenting and child rearing to the extent that children need two involved, active parents in order to develop into independent citizens. The Economy began to push men more fully into their role as fathers right around 1955, as parenting became an important aspect of study for the social sciences.  The economic reality of families from the mid-1950s to the present time is such that the only single income families that can afford to allow mothers to stay home full time are those well above the average for family income.  With both parents working outside the home for the good of the family, and with wages and salaries falling behind in terms of buying power, Western cultures have undergone rapid social changes.

Responding to these economic imperatives, families began having fewer children, purchasing child care to shore up gaps in caregiving created by working parents, and moving responsibility for previously mother-centered care to fathers.  Adding to the economic strains, a divorce rate that climbed to 50% by the mid-1980s and a desire among women to continue their education into advanced degrees, patriarchy as a functional aspect of social organization began to be redefined.  Today patriarchy hardly resembles its traditional form, now deriving meaning from those qualities possessed by men and seen as good for children of both genders.  

As noted by Griswold ( http://www.skk.uio.no/formidling/motherhood/griswold_030521.html ): Just as moralists expected mothers to redouble their childrearing efforts, fathers found themselves being called to domesticity in new ways. For the middle class, family relationships underwent a process of renegotiation that helped affirm class identity. It was the middle class that forged the modern companionate family, a family characterized by romance, companionship, sexual fulfillment, mutual respect, and emotional satisfaction. The result of a host of complex factors, the companionate family--predicated upon a strict division of labor wherein mothers concentrated on child nurture while fathers earned bread and spent time with their children--represented a shift in the nature of patriarchy from an emphasis on sexual repression, male authority, and hierarchical organization to an emphasis upon sexual satisfaction and mutual rights and responsibilities. Central to this new vision of domestic life was an emphasis on parental, including fatherly nurture. The new fathers of the twentieth-century middle class ideally took a more active role in their children's development. In part, this emphasis grew out of the cultural emphasis on family companionship in general, in part out of concern that boys needed a manly presence in order to escape becoming overly feminized. Regardless of the impulse behind the advice, commentators urged men to play with their children and to form close, affectionate bonds with them. The emphasis was on mutual companionship, growth, and enrichment. Men would learn the joys of nurture, children the joys of fatherly solicitude and good cheer. Friendship and play, not obedience and discipline, would define the ideal paternal relationship with children.

This new vision of middle class fatherhood emerged at a time when older sources of male identity were disintegrating, when a "crisis in masculinity" was at hand. The sources of this crisis were many and reflected a century of social change. Men who had once known the pleasures of face-to-face relationships on farms and in small towns now lived in cities and suburbs that fostered a sense of anonymity and insignificance. Men who had once worked as artisans or farmers now labored among the ranks of the white collar, an increasingly segmented and specialized domain in which the worker was less dependent upon his character than upon his "personality." Men who had once found meaning in religion and the stern injunctions of Puritan forefathers now heard only platitudes of good cheer, a rhetoric of "evasive banalities" that impoverished the ability of religion to give meaning to life. Nor could men find a source of stability in gender relationships. Since the mid-nineteenth century, domestic moralists and feminists alike had attacked male prerogatives and powers, prompting a few intrepid men to espouse feminist principles but even more to worry about a seemingly over-civilized, excessively domesticated culture and to call for a re-toughening of American boyhood. Women, mothers particularly, might sap manly strength unless fathers stepped in and brought masculine values to the family hearth. Thus, nineteenth-century maternalism came not without costs, and the cost might include overly feminized boys who were desperate for a father's guidance and companionship. The culture now provides interested males with the training necessary for becoming good parents. It also provides disinterested males with opportunities to shirk their responsibilities as parents. These people are doomed to be failures as parents, failures as people.

The Economy changed dramatically after 1950. In the fifties, most of the jobs available to people were divided into Management (male), Labor (largely male), with a few places for women (they have inferior upper body strength, weak moralities, and are prone to care about their children more than their job) to pursue careers (nursing, teaching, domestic work, waitressing). After World War II, returning veterans married their high school sweeties and settled down for the good life _ and the divorce rate started to rise. Simultaneously, the economy began to shift from a labor intensive (male dominated) job market, to a more service oriented, information delivery job market which would employ more women in a wider range of employment. Increasing numbers of mothers with small children began working outside the home for longer periods of time.

Geographic mobility became the norm for most families after 1950. Employment opportunities and corporate growth required that men change cities with a change in jobs. This required a little more father involvement in the absence of extended kin for child care and developmental advising, even though the period can be characterized by a huge growth in child related services, such as pediatric medicine, commercial child care, child psychology and so on. Where grandmother might have advised parents on the proper way to discipline their children prior to 1950, after that date advice came with a statement for services rendered.

Increasing awareness of women's rights issues slowly began to occur as more women entered the workforce full time outside the home. This element had its most profound effect on shaping the cultural attitude about fathers in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, the image of masculinity began to change as fathers increasingly found themselves more in charge of their children's rearing. Simple exposure to developing children seems to have allowed fathers more flexibility in the performance of their parenting role.

Today, the growing awareness of fathers' potential significance in the lives of children has a lot to do with the growing numbers of women doing social science. The research is partly "pure" science and partly purposive efforts to change the way fathers are viewed so they will change their behaviors. For example, some fathers maintain they need no child psychology - they are right and kids should do as they say.

Recognizing that personality continues to develop over the lifespan, theories now take a more flexible approach to explaining personality change. George Herbert Mead's Theory of Symbolic Interaction is set forth in an important series of essays - Mind, Self & Society (Mead, 1934). It is a major contribution to the field of social psychology. He argued that:

"there can be no self (no part of the personality) apart from society, no consciousness of self, and no communication. In its turn, society must be understood as a structure that emerges through an ongoing process of communicative social acts, through transactions between persons who are mutually oriented toward each other." (Coser, 1971, p. 344).

The emerging self can be understood as a mind set, or thought-stream), which arises out of the dynamic relationship between a person and the environment in which he is living. Through repetition of activities (i.e., playing specific games, imitating specific behaviors, getting instruction and correction from specific folk), the self and the mind begin to emerge during childhood. This argument is important to our discussion of American male development because of the specific environmental interactors he defines as significant (meaningful).

Mead divides the self into two parts - the "I" is the controller, the inner self, the place where responses to the expectations of others are formulated. The "me" is the organized, personified set of attitudes and behaviors that are expected by others, outward behavior. Seeking the approval of significant others, the "I" attempts to emit specific "me's" that have the look and feel of acceptability. In other words, to gain social approval from parents, peers, and other important folk, the individual will modify his behavior and attitudes by paying close attention to their gestures of approval. This accounts for Self-consciousness:

Figure 3-1. 
Mead's I-me Dialectic.

I (act)--------> me   I (act)------>me        I(act)-----> me
\reflections on action/\reflections on action/\ ...and so on ...

Actions, symbols, and others become "significant" precisely  because of our ability to generalize, abstract, and communicate 
about and through them. Significant action is recognized because we understand where the motivation to action derives. 
Significant symbols occur if I call out in another,  the same response I call out in myself by using a specific symbol. We do this all the time. We get up in the morning and head for the shower. We want to be clean and fresh because it is the thing to do - it is a personal value, right? Try staying away from the shower for five or six days and then take note of the reaction you get from the people you see every day. Mead would say we take our morning shower, pick out appropriate clothing to wear, check our looks in the mirror several times a day, take care to gauge the content of our words, and are always ready to retract, regroup, or reorganized ourselves because significant people are watching us and WE WANT THEIR APPROVAL!"The essence of the self is reflexivity - the individual is only an individual because of her relation to others. Through the individual's ability to take in his imagination the attitudes of others, his self becomes an object of his own reflection." (Coser, 1971, p. 337). He called this the Generalized Other. Mead asserts that socialization occurs through a maturational process. Through interaction with others we pass through three stages of social and personal development (see Figure 3-2 below).

Figure 3-2.  Mead's Generalized Other.    

1. Egocentric Stage 0-2yrs   The child is unaware of any other personality
                and behaves as though he is the center of the universe. 
2. Play Stage 2-7yrs         The child moves through rapid  emulation of 
                roles it perceives - rapid role changes (e.g., cowboy,  
                fireman, prize fighter, super hero, doctor, etc.). 
                Through the practice of "pretending" to be others, the 
                child begins to understand the concept of  "others".
3. Game Stage 7-80+ yrs  The maturing individual perceives other's 
                expectations, and self's rights,  gradually acquiring the 
                ability to take the role of the generalized other, which is 
                simply an amalgamation of all the socially appropriate 
                values and behaviors necessary for optimal social 
                adaptation and interaction.

This acquisition of the Generalized Other Role is due to  the uniquely human ability to use symbols (e.g., language, face, signs, signals, etc.),  and to abstractly understand the Inner self, or the "I".  Incidentally, our failure to  recognize this fact, while simultaneously  becoming a master of it, accounts for all of the pain, confusion,  and heartache that each of us encounters between the ages of 1 and 99 years. Thus: society and the individual are the same. My values, by and large are also society's, or I wouldn't hold them. Three Big Ideas in SI Theory: Mind Self & Society Mind uses symbols to designate objects in the environment, the meaning of which is completely constructed by the individual. Mind inhibits inappropriate lines of action by using imaginative rehearsals. Self emerges as the individual acts symbolically toward himself and others. The self is simply a continually redefined role repertoire. Society is simply organized patterns of interaction among diverse individuals. Roles are similar enough in the collective of minds for empathy to take place. Society is nothing more than the collective shared meaning of the rules by which we interact. The interaction between the ever present society and all its social control agents, the developing self, and the individual mind that constantly mediates between social and personal mandates is also Mead's definition of symbolic interaction.

IV. The Social Construction of Intimacy

As we have argued here, unless there is general consensus among the persons in a society concerning the meanings we give to objects, events, and situations in our lives_unless we generally agree on the meaning of symbols_social life would be impossible. The definitions we give to intimacy depend on 1) the general values of the society in which we live, and 2) the more specific values of the groups to which we belong or with which we identify.

It is in this rootedness in socially shared definitions that we are allowed to carry intimacy beyond the assertion that each human relationship is unique. We are in love, or are friendly, with a person precisely because we have given the relationship that interpretation. Walster (1974) suggests that in order to experience passionate love, one must first have learned the proper meanings associated with specific physiological feelings. "Your eyes meet, you smile warmly at each other, and as you approach one another, oblivious to those in the room, you begin to experience increased heart and respiration rates, flushing of the face, dryness of the mouth, and slight body tremors - lust or love at first sight."

Moving from strangers to intimates - we expect to fall in love, have sex, and get married within well-recognized time frames. Adults often characterize teenagers' first attempts at establishing an intimate relationship as "puppy love", because they are socially defined as too young to experience the real thing. They don't think so! On the other hand, persons who remain unmarried past their late twenties may be considered "problems" by parents, relatives, and friends. Society has a very narrow path for us to think on. The Romantic Ideal has it that there is only one person in all the world that we are meant to love_that, although love is blind, we will recognize our true love at first sight. Though we are taught the romantic ideal, society provides us with many potential lovers.

For example, Kierkegaard thought the proposition that first love is the true love to be very accommodating and could come to the aid of humankind in various ways. If a man is not fortunate enough to get possession of what he desires, then he still has the sweetness of the first love. If a man is so unfortunate as to love many times, each time is still the first love. One loves many times, and each time one denies the validity of the preceding times, one will maintain the correctness of the proposition that one loves only once. (1959). Nice idea, but even Kierkegaard was smart enough never to try that jazz in divorce court.

Symbolic interaction theory explains, for example, why sons can come to respect and admire their fathers - who spent much less time and effort in the sons' child rearing, while finding their mothers to be weaker, less important figures - even though their mothers efforts constituted 90% of the son's childhood experience.

Another early social thinker had influence on this old theory. Charles H. Cooley (1864-1929) saw society as a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and took an organic world view versus a mechanistic one. Cooley's main contribution to Symbolic Interaction theory was the Looking Glass Self, which states that with no sharp distinction between the individual and society, the self (personality) is simply a product of social interaction. "Society and the Self are twin born." There could be no sense of "I" without a correlative "You, We, They, He, or She". All images of the self are personal interpretations of one's social reflection in his self-conscious model:

• Self Consciousness is arrived at via:

-Our imagination of our appearance as an object to another person.
-Our image of the other person's evaluation of our appearance.
-Our feelings about he other's perceived evaluation.

Because we cannot process our reflection from every potential interaction partner, we come to depend on the judgments of a few important or significant others. Thus becomes possible the familiar concepts from Structural-Functional Theory - primary and secondary groups.

The Primary Group is the device through which our culture is transmitted. Through interaction with parents, we acquire language (the second in a series of artificial symbols, the first being the meaning associated with feelings we get from nurturing behaviors of our parents). After rudimentary language acquisition, we move in larger circles (e.g., playmates, kindergarten, first grade and on to high school, college, job, and paying taxes.). As we grow and develop (as we are socialized), we encounter Secondary Groups-the educational system, business associates, and governmental agents. Members of our Primary group serve as socialization agents, those who groom us for interaction with the larger, Secondary, society. George Herbert Mead explained this process of socialization. Those of you with a familiar reading of Piaget will find Mead interesting.

Figure 3-3. 
Characteristics of Primary and Secondary Relations.
Primary Groups                           Secondary Groups  
-informal organization                   -formally organized
-relationship is an end in itself        -relationships are means to ends 
-collective interests at heart           -self  interests most important 
-emotionally  intense                    -emotionally neutral 
-diffuse rights & expectations           -specific rights & expectations 
-particularistic (person oriented)       -performance oriented V. The American Family as a Social System

As a system of interacting personalities, a family may undergo changes in its operating procedure. Changes in one family member's life always extends to changes in the lives of all other family members. This tendency for family systems to regain balance after a big change is known as Homeostasis, and it works through hierarchical levels of feedback and control (Figure 2.4)

Figure 3.4 The Family System.

Environmental Inputs ------->   Comparison &    -------- > Change Outputs
                                Morphogenesis<-------
                                                                                                 |
Environmental  Inputs ------>   Meta-rules of ----- |--- > Change Outputs
                              Comparison & Control -|     
    
Environmental  Inputs ------>Family Rules of Transformation--> Change Outputs

    Broderick, C. (1979). "The family systems approach." In W.E. Burr, et al.(Eds.),
CONTEMPORARY THEORIES ABOUT THE FAMILY, VOL. II, New York, Free Press. If we take the general systems model as a fair representation of the way families exist from day to day, then it is only a short conceptual leap to add a lifespan perspective to the idea of family development over time. One was to think about change from birth to death is to consider that a person's life is punctuated by role transitions - from infant to child, child to teen, self-centered teen to pfassionate young adult, young adult to nuturing parent, and so on.,  Life Punctuated by Transitions:

17-22     22-40              40-45     45-60          60-65        65-80
E. Ad.  Early Adulthood     Midlife   Middle Adult  Late Life     Old Age
     Trans.            Trans.    Trans.         Trans.     Transition

Similar to the developmental tasks associated with cognitive stage development from, say preoperations to concrete operations, each period has associated developmental tasks - which if mastered contribute to a productive stage of development throughout adulthood. Erikson is a good place to begin this consideration, and a good place for new scholars to begin their search. But let's compare the transitions from one stage to the next based on gender. It appears that girls change into women/wives/mothers/grandmothers much more fluidly than do boys. The popular literature seems to indicate that boys stay boys for a longer period of time, and more urgently resist the transitions to true adulthood. This notion is illustrated by more disciplines than psychology.

Nonpsychological interpretations of the dominance of the mother-infant bond in societies follows anthropological findings. Mother's are the primary caretakers in most of the world's cultures - leaving fathers to play a lesser part in nurturing. For most of the world's cultures, men provide, either through the sale of their labor, or through their hunting prowess. This is a historical fact that is only a little less evident today than it was two hundred years ago. As the world has moved to what President Bush and others referred to as a "new world order" in which all workers compete for the same opportunities to work (the NAFTA and GATT treaties are examples of policy emanating from this idea), women are in the peculiar position of having perform the traditional male role (to work outside the home to help provide for their families). Men have not reciprocated by taking on the traditionally female role (to nurture and domesticate for their families).

Interestingly, the relationship of child to parents of either gender is neither biologically nor psychologically based. At least, there is evidence that PATERNAL NURTURING BEHAVIOR is not biologically impossible. Strong evidence that nurturant behavior is learned. Ethological studies (lab rats studies) consistently find that virgin females, males, and recently delivered mother rats with female hormones replaced with male ones all exhibited nuturant behavior when placed in close proximity to helpless, newborn offspring. In other words, it is the proximity to young of the same species that initiates nurturing behavior, in mammals at any rate. Exposure to newborns (duration of exposure) is the mediating variable. The longer subject (the rat) was exposed to newborns, despite its lack of biological predisposition to nurture, the more likely nuturing behavior would take place.

Replications of these rat studies have also been done as observation studies using human male and female adolescent and college age students listening to recorded infant cries cries. As most any mother knows, infants have characteristically different cries, each connoting a different need. For example, the onset of a loud cry, closely punctuated by sharp, high pitched yelps that quickly decline and start up again connotes pain - such as something sticking the infant. Cries that are more like dull and throbbing moans connote hunger pangs, while flat pitched cries are telling of a child that is bored and in need of stimulation. Mothers often "understand" that they had to learn the nuances of their children's cries, however, students in observation were able to differentiate between these cries with remarkable accuracy, and there was no difference between the male and female student's ability to tell the difference.

So why does the difference in nurturing behavior continue in most of the world's cultures? ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE AT LEAST AS IMPORTANT, IF NOT MORE SO, THAN BIOLOGY in learning nurturant behaviors and conforming to expectations of same. The argument that men are biologically unprepared for parenting clearly cannot be used to justify the limited role that fathers have traditionally played in care taking. And the symbolic definition of child care, coupled with a historical need for male braun in the hunting field is the main culprit.

Understanding Fathers Today. Given recent changes in social expectations, with most mothers working outside the home during most of their children's lives, you'd think fathers would naturally move into nuturing, caregiving roles. They haven't. Since mothers spend much more time with their infants than fathers, it follows that fathers cannot have as much influence - Right? The facts regarding time infants spend with caregivers may be surprising:

- Infants are in direct or indirect contact with mothers about 9 hours out of 24, as opposed to about 1 hour out of 24 with their fathers.
-After the first year of life, mothers spend time in the general vicinity of their children but not in direct interaction with their children
- Both parents spend less than twenty minutes per day in direct face-to-face interaction with their kids on the average (after the third year of life).

The quality vs. quantity time argument. Studies done to estimate the effects on children of working mothers have shown that no discernible differences can be measured in the development of kids who stay in day care centers vs. kids whose mother's don't work. In fact, some studies suggest that the day care center experience actually increases the child's intellectual development, as well as the quality of time spent between both parents and children. The study HASN'T been done that takes into account the amount of replacement parenting that the husbands of working women do.

Father's today can make more of a direct influence on their children's lives than is socially proscribed. They can encourage satisfaction of curiosity, provide resources, touch, talk, tickle, and point out exciting environmental subtleties. Until the late 1960's parental influence on children was seen as a unidirectional process. Parents taught and children absorbed lessons. We now know that children profoundly influence the lives of their parents.

The marital relationship is almost completely changed with the arrival of the first baby. Mother has a new responsibility and a new toy to play with. Father, in the traditional sense, gets to watch. Spontaneous sexual flirtations are seriously curtailed, usually confined to times when the baby is sleeping, or at the sitters (Young parents typically enter into a period of "sexual vampirism", confining their sexual relationships to times when the kids are asleep or away). Marital harmony spills over into parent-child relationships, as does marital discord. For first time parents, conflicts over children is the third most frequently occuring topic of discussion, preceded by fights about money and work. 

There has been an upsurge of interest in fathering in recent years, both on the part of fathers themselves, many of whom are becoming increasingly involved with their children, and on the part of social scientists, many of whom have begun to take a closer look at the father's role, interactions, and effects on his children. In the past few years, several books and research articles on father's roles and relationships have appeared. Selected portions of that research is reviewed below.

So far, much of what is known about fathers' effects on their children comes, ironically, from studies of children without fathers. Father-absence, especially in the earliest years, is associated with many undesirable characteristics and behaviors of both sons and daughters from childhood and on through adulthood. A father's presence at home is, of course, no assurance that the level of his involvement will be high. Where there is father-presence there may still be low father-availability. And, indeed, surveys show that the world over, fathers spend only a small fraction of the time that mothers, even employed mothers, spend on child care activities.

LaRossa has provided an important perspective regarding the question of what is happening to American fathers. Vast social and economic changes have taken place over the course of this century and continue as we approach the 21st century. In the wake of these changes, has fatherhood changed? According to LaRossa, "Although the evidence is scant, it would appear that the answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes, fatherhood has changed, if one looks at the culture of fatherhood_the norms, values, and beliefs surrounding men's parenting. No, fatherhood has not changed (at least significantly), if one looks at the conduct of fatherhood_what fathers do; how fathers behave vis-a-vis their children." (1)

Support for this distinction between the culture and conduct of fatherhood is provided by four somewhat recent studies, all which asked men and women both whether they believed homemaking and child care should be equally shared by husbands and wives when both spouses were employed and whether such equal sharing actually existed in their family. The data is summarized in the following table.

Percent who report equal sharing - Couples versus Husbands/Wives Reporting Separately  
                                      Couples      Men  Women     
Harris Poll (1988)                      67%         87%  14%
Hiller-Philliber (1989)    Housework    53%         55%  20%
                           Child care               80%  80%
Rubenstein (1990)                       75%         85% <30%
Googins (1985)                                      74%  13%

Additional support for and an interesting embellishment of this distinction between the culture of fatherhood and the conduct of fatherhood is provided by recent research. This research shows that blue collar fathers have actually changed more in terms of their involvement in homemaking and child care than have middle class fathers (including professionals), when their wives are employed away from home. However, the middle class (especially professional) males' ideology or professed beliefs (in short, their culture) is much more egalitarian than are those of the blue collar males. At least part of the explanation for this perhaps surprising finding is offered by Ferree. She argues that, since it is not in men's personal self-interest to initiate greater involvement in homemaking and child care, any changes must be initiated by women. She further argues that if women are to be empowered to initiate greater involvement of spouse (and children) they must perceive themselves and be perceived by family as sharing the breadwinner role. Such definition, she says, is more prevalent in lower income families where the need for her income is more apparent. In upper middle-class families, wives' wage-work can still be viewed as a privilege rather than a contribution. (2)

There are several additional explanations for the slow change in men's involvement in homemaking and child care. Perhaps most important is that both men and women have been explicitly and implicitly socialized into the assumption that the domestic domain is the woman's domain. They have come to take for granted (meaning the assumption is not consciously examined) that the bulk of housekeeping tasks, child care, and household administration will be done by the wife/mother. One consequence of this, according to research by Ferree and by Hood (3), is that men are not aware of the inequity (they just don't see how much time and effort their wives expend on the domestic functions). Further, women tend to be reasonably satisfied most of the time if they see their husbands doing "their fair share" (and their perception of a man's "fair share" tends to be based on what they saw their fathers doing).

Most husbands today are doing more than that, though it still is considerably less than what women are doing. Gary Trudeau in a 1987 Doonesbury cartoon provided an insightful observation on why men generally feel satisfied and comfortable with their involvement, despite its inequity. J.J. asked her husband Rick: "I know you love Jeff (their young son) as much as I do. So why don't you seem as torn up about not being able to spend time with him?" Rick's response: "Well, it may be because I'm spending a whole lot more time on family than my father did. And you're spending less time than your mother did. Consequently, you feel guilty while I naturally feel pretty proud of myself." Trudeau is quite right about this generation of fathers spending more time on family than their fathers did. Yarrow (4), in her survey of 14,000 fathers, found that 81 percent reported taking a bigger part in child care duties than did their fathers; 68 percent said they spend more time with their children; and 44 percent believe their children know them better as a person.

Another obstacle to men's involvement in homemaking and child care is that many men work for companies that do not make it easy to spend time with children and have a career simultaneously. A survey by Catalyst, a New York-based research group of Fortune 500 companies of employer attitudes towards fathers taking leave revealed that 63 percent of the respondents believed "no leave" was reasonable. Nearly half the 114 companies that offered unpaid leave to fathers said men shouldn't take off any time for parenting responsibilities. Ninety percent of those companies offering leaves to fathers called them "personal leave" and made no attempt to inform employees that such leave was available to new fathers. (5)

A final obstacle to fathers' increased involvement in childrearing is mothers' ambivalence about that involvement. On the one hand, they are tired and welcome help. On the other hand, many women seem to have concern about
(1) giving up their domestic power,
(2) sharing children's affection and attachment,
(3) the way their husbands do the domestic jobs. This point deserves some elaboration.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is evidence to indicate that only a minority of women seems to desire increased participation by their husbands in child care, and that the rates are not appreciably higher for employed than for non-employed mothers (6) A study (7) examining why more fathers do not use paternal leave, found that a substantial number of women did not encourage (and even discouraged) their husbands taking paternal leave because they did not want to risk the child's bonding with the father.

Multiple interpretations of these results are possible. Polat- nik (8) has explicitly concluded that the home has been women's dominion and many women are reluctant to relinquish or share control over the only domain in which they have power. Others have also postulated that women may fear that increased paternal participation would involve a loss of domination in the family arena and would bring about a dilution of exclusive mother-child relationships. (9) Mothers' prospects for obtaining custody of children following a divorce might also be jeopardized when fathers have been more involved in child care and have established close relationships to their children.

These concerns are understandable; mothers may not feel the same sense of crucial importance to their children's development when child-rearing is shared with another person with equal investment and commitment. As long as motherhood remains a central aspect of self-definition for many women and prospects for fulfillment in the employment arena remain uncertain, many may fear the abdication or partial abdication of responsibility for parental care. Those who do so may experience guilt, ambivalence, or regret.

Changes are occurring, fairly quickly and widely regarding the culture of fatherhood; not so quickly in the conduct of fatherhood. As James Levine, director of the Fatherhood Project at the Families and Work Institute, has said: "Fatherhood is in the midst of an evolution, not a revolution. We shouldn't be discouraged by the accordingly glacial pace of change."

Notes
(1) LaRossa, Ralph. "Fatherhood and Social Change." Family Relations. 37(4):451-457, October 1988
(2) Ferree, Myra Marx. "Negotiating Household Roles and Responsibilities: Resistance, Conflict, and Change." Paper presented at annual conference of the National Council on Family Relations, Philadelphia, November, 1988.
(3) Ferree, op.cit. Hood, Jane C. "The provider's role: It's meaning and measurement." Journal of Marriage and the Family, 48:349-359, 1986.
(4) Yarrow, Leah. "Fathers Speak Out." Parents, September 1985, pp. 91-94ff.
(5) Select committee on Children, Youth and Families (U.S. House of Representatives.)"Babies and Briefcases:
Creating a Family- Friendly Workplace for Fathers," June 11, 1991. (6) Lamb, Michael, Joseph Pleck, and James Levine. "Effects of Paternal Involvement on Fathers and Mothers." Pp. 67-83 in Robert Lewis and Marvin Sussmann (eds). Men's Changing Roles in the Family. New York: Haworth Press, 1986. Russell, Graeme and associates. "Work/family policies: The changing role of fathers and the presumption of shared responsibility for parenting," Australian Journal of Social Issues 23(4):249- 267, 1988.
(7) Schwartz, Felice N. "Management of women and the new facts of life," Harvard Business Review, January- February 1989, Pp. 65- 76.
(8) Polatnik, M. Rivka. "Why men don't rear children: A power analysis." Pp. 21-40 in Joyce Trebalcot (ed). Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984.
(9) Levine, James A. "The Work/Family Dilemma Not Just for Mothers Anymore." Presentation at St. Paul (MN) Technical College, October 26, 1989.
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