Fathers and Families The new science of fatherhood

Apologies for lack of recent posts...

2010-04-28T14:33:00.002-04:00

...I'm on deadline to finish my book, Why Fathers Matter, and so I have limited time to break out items for the blog.

Please stay tuned...

Paul

Delays in family court: What price do our children pay?

2010-01-07T13:08:00.000-05:00

For my speculation on the possible consequences of extensive delays in family courts across the country--delays in cases involving child abuse and neglect, among other things--see my first post on True/Slant. And please leave a comment here or there.

What makes a fit parent?

2010-01-04T16:04:00.002-05:00

Public Radio International's The Takeaway had a piece this morning about a quadriplegic mother who risks losing her child to the child's father (her ex-boyfriend) who is arguing that she is incapable of caring for the child because of her disability.

There's an interesting bit near the end of the piece when the conversation takes a turn toward what makes a fit parent. And Lisa Belkin, the Motherlode blogger who talks about families every Monday on The Takeaway, observes that some working mothers are losing custody of their children because the father spends more time with the children.

As I noted in a different case in my previous post, this seems unfair on the surface. Just because mothers work to support their children--a good thing, we might argue--they stand to lose custody in a break-up?

If it's unfair, it's been unfair to millions of fathers for decades--fathers who lost custody on precisely those grounds.

If we're going to change the rules to be fair to working parents, let's make sure we make them equally fair to mothers and fathers.

Working women encounter new rules for custody after divorce--and that might be a good thing

2009-12-08T16:20:00.002-05:00

Julie Michaud was a working mother in Boston; her husband, Mark, was a stay-at-home dad. When the two divorced, Julie sought and expected joint custody of their two children, 5 and 7. She was shocked when Mark, who asked for primary custody, got it.

According to an article by Sally Abrahms on workingmother.com, some 2.2 million mothers in this country do not have primary physical custody of their children. "Not long ago," the article says, "men usually paid the child support and doled out the alimony. Moms (working or not) almost always got the kids in messy divorce wars. Years of changing diapers, wiping noses and kissing boo-boos gave them the edge. But now the tide is turning."

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Abrahms doesn't take a position, except to note, near the end of her piece, that it's best for children to have good relationships with both of their parents.

I'd suggest that it's still true that mothers almost always get the kids, and that the courts should not take such a reflexive approach. If the growth in the number of working mothers means more fathers get the kids--if judges are forced to judge, rather than dole out the kids by rote--that could be a good thing.

Let's ask our judges to make the decision that's best for the children, not just give mothers the kids.

Raising boys without men?

2009-10-18T17:39:00.000-04:00

Here's an intriguing book title. It just caught my eye, but the title suggests its at odds with what I've been arguing here, that fathers are important for children, both boys and girls.

Just noting it here. If you're familiar with this book or its author, Peggy Drexler, let me know. And more on this soon.

Exercising judgment

2009-10-12T11:20:00.002-04:00

Remember that amusing piece of camping gear that includes a folding fork, spoon, and knife? Zachary Christie, a public-school student in Delaware, and a new Cub Scout, was so excited to get one when he joined the scouts that he took it to school to use it for lunch.

According to a story in The New York Times, Zachary now faces 45 days in the school district's reform school.That's him in the picture. Take a look. Reform school?

The Times writes that "based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, 'regardless of possessor’s intent,' knives are banned."

The issue here is proper exercise of judgment. Yes, the code of conduct allows no exceptions. But a teacher could have quietly explained to the boy that the utensil was not permitted and quickly pocketed it.

If you find this outrageous, suspend your outrage for a moment. Because the story also reports that last year, a third-grader was expelled--expelled!--because her grandmother sent her to school with a birthday cake and a knife to cut it with.

The teacher called the principal and the girl was expelled. The kicker? Before calling the principal, the teacher used the knife to cut the cake.

Happy birthday!

Again, a little exercise of judgment might have been in order. Cut the cake, have the party, and send the knife home at the end of the day. Consider the knife in the possession of the teacher, not the student.

What lesson are those teachers teaching? Maybe it's this: Don't trust authority, don't trust your teachers, because what they are doing is absurd, even in the eyes of a third-grader.

Update, Wednesday morning, Oct. 14: The Associated Press reports that the Christina School Board in Delaware voted unanimously yesterday to reduce the punishment for kindergartners or first-graders who take "weapons" to school to suspensions of three to five days. Even that milder punishment seems silly int his case, but I suppose we count this as progress.

The good news for Zachary? He can return to school.

The children's suicides

2009-10-11T10:50:00.002-04:00

Fascinating interview in Saturday's New York Times with the writer A.S. Byatt on her new novel, The Children's Book. The central character is a writer of children's books, and Byatt says the idea of the novel came to her because she had been thinking about how child-rearing changed in the late-Victorian era.

“People began talking to their children as people,” Byatt tells interviewer Charles McGrath. “They even took tea with them. That’s a change — you wouldn’t find it in Dickens or Jane Austen. And this also coincides with Freud’s deciding that everything comes from childhood and discovering all sorts of little dark things there, even if they weren’t true.”

I don't know much about that, but her comment made me instantly interested. Then I read on a few more grafs, and found this: Byatt says she was struck by “all the children of the children’s writers who killed themselves."

Alison Uttley is one writer she mentions, who wrote stories about rabbits and hedgehogs. Her son grew up and married a woman Uttley didn't like. The son drove his car off of a cliff.

From my About Fathers blog at Psychology Today...

2009-08-14T22:43:00.002-04:00

A childless man was released from jail, where he had been sent for non-payment of child support.

Read the story.

Despite what surveys say, we do enjoy our kids

2009-08-05T11:01:00.004-04:00

"I enjoy spending time with my kids."

I'll wager that most of us would agree with that statement. But psychologists have long told us otherwise. When people are asked what they enjoy, they put outdoor activities and watching television far above spending time with their kids. (Sex also comes in around mid-list; we'll save speculation on that for another day. In the meantime, if I ever say I enjoy TV more than sex, shoot me.)

Now a couple of British academics --Matthew White and Paul Dolan -- are telling us what we suspected all along: There was something wrong with those surveys.

In a study published in Psychological Science, they queried people about what they found pleasurable, and got the standard answers, as above. But they also inquired about something else: What do you find meaningful or worthwhile? Work topped the list, and spending time with children wasn't far behind.

I find spending time with my kids rewarding, meaningful, and almost always fun.

I'm not counting time spent with a crying child between, say, midnight and 5 am.

A fathers' right to know?

2009-08-04T14:09:00.003-04:00

Last week, the actor Jude Law released a statement saying he was going to be a father. People magazine and others have reported that the mother is a 24-year-old aspiring actress named Samantha Burke.

Law's statement suggested he was surprised by the news. And if the relationship was last year, that means the baby must be due soon, either in August or September.

So while we don't know for sure, it appears that Law found out he was having a child only during the last few months of the mother's pregnancy. Surprise.

Should Law have known earlier? Burke didn't have to tell him at all; she might have chosen to keep the matter to herself, and Law would never know he has another child in the world.

Should Burke have been obligated to tell Law? Would we want such a requirement to be written into law?

Should a father have a right to know when he's going to have a child?

Domestic violence--a twist

2009-08-04T10:56:00.009-04:00

It's a familiar story. A mother and father fight, shouting at first, then grabbing one another, and it ends with one of them bruised and bloodied. Police arrive. They cuff the perpetrator. A social worker takes the children into custody.

But in a twist, the police put the cuffs on the parent who's bleeding.

Why would the police arrest a woman who's been abused, rather than her abuser?

Because in this case it was the father who had been abused, not the mother. And despite his explanation that he was the victim, the police cuffed him anyway.

Here's the story about David Woods, by Glenn Sacks and Ned Holstein:
No one believed me.

Please let me know what you think.

Fathers Day dart to the L.A. Times

2009-06-22T14:04:00.004-04:00

File this under: Newspapers wondering why they are losing readers.

The Los Angeles Times' political blog reprints President Obama's inspirational, and rather bland, Fathers Day proclamation. The proclamation doesn't make news, but why not post it, as the Times did, and pause a moment on Fathers Day for a little inspiration?

But the Times isn't content to leave things there. At the end of the proclamation, it tacks on extra language (in the same type face as the proclamation) that presumably didn't come from the White House.

"Your father would want you to click here to receive Twitter alerts" of the Times's political blog, it says.

The White House Fathers Day proclamation was nothing more to the Times' editors than an opportunity to promote its Tweets?

Sheesh. Another case of old media being tone deaf.

FDA panel backs antipsychotic drugs for kids

2009-06-10T17:38:00.004-04:00

An FDA advisory panel has concluded that three antipsychotic drugs already widely used in children--Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Geodon--are safe and effective in treating children with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, according to news reports.

The FDA is late to the game here--combined sales of the three drugs reached $10 billion last year, according to Reuters.

The drugs are approved only for adults, not for children. But doctors can legally prescribe them for children.

The advisory panel, made up of experts outside the FDA, cautioned that the long-term effects of the drugs on children is unknown. No long-term studies have been done.

That's of particular concern in children, who might have to take the drugs for a lifetime.

The FDA can now consider whether to approve the drugs for children, which would allow the drugs' makers to begin actively marketing them for children--something the companies cannot do now.

Parental leave: U.S. vs. world

2009-06-08T15:05:00.004-04:00

This chart is based on Sakiko Tanaka’s 2005 article “Parental leave and child health across OECD countries” ([p F7-F28] Economic Journal Volume 115 Issue 501), by way of Matthew Yglesias.

Don't worry about the details, if they are difficult to read. Here's what you should take away: All of the countries on this map offer at least 14 weeks of parental leave, with one exception: the United States of America, the world's richest nation.

Things lost when families dissolve

2009-06-08T13:24:00.012-04:00

A divorce can offer opportunity, but it almost always involves loss. Loss of the kids. Loss of the house. Loss of friends, loss of a familiar routine, maybe loss of a job.

Sometimes the things that are lost are oddly sentimental, or of emotional value only to the person who loses them. On rarer occasions, unique and truly valuable items can sadly disappear.

That's what happened to Rudy Mancuso, who took one of baseball's most famous photographs (above) and never received proper credit. It was taken on Oct. 3, 1951, during the final playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, the game that included the home run known forever after as "the shot heard round the world."

As my friend Josh Prager beautifully recounts in the Wall Street Journal, Mancuso was unable to sell the photo the next day, and he quickly fell into obscurity. A year later he and his wife separated. The priceless negative disappeared. And as the years drifted by, even his family came to doubt whether he had taken the picture. It became a "family legend," Prager reports.

In January, Mancuso's wife's sister died. While her nieces were sorting through her possessions, they found an envelope marked "baseball." Inside was the negative. They gave it to Mancuso, who was 89 years old and had not seen it for 57 years.

Mancuso transferred ownership to his sons, hoping it would provide for them.

It was timely; Mancuso died on May 10th.

When Mancuso lost his wife, he also lost the tangible record of the crowning accomplishment of his professional life. Happily for him and his family, he recovered it before he died.

Should stepmothers get Mothers' Day cards?

2009-04-28T16:52:00.005-04:00

The Council on Contemporary Families thinks so. It's impossible to know how many stepmothers there are in America, because the census bureau doesn't count them. But there must be quite a few, because 46 percent of marriages include at least one partner who's been married before.

The legal system has, however, failed to take note of this group.

Stepmothers, the Council on Contemporary Families says, "often feel ignored, both by society at large and by their stepchildren."

More from the council's release today:

In many states, stepmothers have custody responsibilities for their stepchildren but no legal rights regarding them. Even if they drive kids to games, play Monopoly endlessly, and help with brushing teeth every night, they are considered "legal strangers." If there is an injury at one of those games, a stepmother cannot sign
her stepchild into the emergency room without written permission from her partner or the other legal parent. Oregon is one of only a few states that protects the rights of a stepparent who has formed a relationship with a minor child...

I agree with the council that we ought to send 'em a card. No harm done, and it's a good thing to recognize what they do for their stepchildren--even if society at large doesn't recognize it.

I look forward to a release from the council in June, extending the same consideration to stepfathers.

The U.S. is stealing immigrants' children

2009-04-24T08:56:00.005-04:00

Encarnacion Bail Romero, a native of Guatemala, has lost all parental rights to her two-year-old boy, Carlos. Legally, he is no longer her son.

Why did this happen? Because she abandoned him, according to a ruling by a judge in Jasper County, Missouri.

That might seem to be a reasonable outcome, until we consider the reason why she "abandoned" him: She was jailed by immigration authorities two years ago and is still there, awaiting deportation.

The deportation might be justified. But can there by any possible justification for then saying that she abandoned her child? Or for the penalty she paid--to lose all parental rights, with the likelihood that after she is deported she will never be able to visit him, and probably never see him again? An article in the New York Times says cases like this are popping up across the country.

When Romero is shipped home to Guatemala, she can tell her family, friends, and neighbors that because she slipped into the United States illegally, the Americans felt they were justified in stealing her child.

And she would be correct.

Are Humans Monogamous?

2009-04-24T06:10:00.002-04:00

An interesting question came up today while I was doing research on my fathers book.

Are humans monogamous?

I would have said yes without giving it much thought. Apparently researchers disagree on this question. Think about people you know who have had children with more than one partner. Are they monogamous? Serially monogamous? Or polygamous?

The answer has implications for how we think about fathers, and how families have been shaped by evolution--and by their environments.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Sunshine Cleaning

2009-04-16T21:32:00.003-04:00

Two daughters lose their mother early, leaving them with a gruff, kindly, but ineffectual father. Neither is able to come to grips with her life. But they keep trying. They get lucky, and unlucky. Life is complicated.

Sunshine Cleaning, from some of the same people responsible for Little Miss Sunshine (do all their movies need the word "sunshine" in the title?) is a sad, interesting movie about people who are getting by, but whose emotional lives are a wreck. It's a story about how they try come to terms with their emotional loss, many years later. There are many strong, honest moments in this film. I recommend it.

The choking game

2009-04-16T18:39:00.005-04:00

It's a new one on me--the choking game, or the fainting game. I came across a blog post by a distraught father whose son died this way. The post didn't explain the choking game very well, but I found an interesting entry on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia references a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 82 children 6-19 years old died while playing this game between 1995 and 2007.

Those numbers are far too small to show up on any broad assessment of health risks to teens.

But each one of those deaths represents a devastated family, with parents and sibilings who might never entirely recover.

Where are the fathers?

2009-03-20T12:18:00.003-04:00

Time and again, I've noted studies and situations in which I was surprised to find little or no discussion of fathers. But I'm still surprised and, shocked, I guess, when I see new examples of it.

The American Bar Association, according to the University of Houston's Children and the Law blog, is holding two meetings in Washington in May: The First National Parents' Attorneys Conference, and The 2009 National Conference on Children and the Law.

I did not do a sophisticated study of the programs; I merely searched the titles and abstracts for the word "father." I found only one instance, on a long, long web page. It was in a session about getting fathers more involved in welfare cases. In other words, the only mention of fathers was in a situation where fathers are delinquent.

I must add a very important caveat; the word "mother" does not appear at all in the document, which talks mostly about parents. So this isn't the clean example I'd like it to be. Still, I worry. Is the ABA, in its deliberations and discussions about children and the law, including fathers as a resource?

President Obama's family agenda

2009-03-18T14:40:00.003-04:00

Of interest to fathers, from the president's family agenda:

"...Strengthen Fatherhood and Families: Barack Obama has re-introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, ensure that support payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies, fund support services for fathers and their families, and support domestic violence prevention efforts. President Obama will sign this bill into law and continue to implement innovative measures to strengthen families..."

Read the entire Obama family agenda here.

Baby Bear, Baby Bear--Where's Daddy?

2009-03-16T16:43:00.007-04:00

A few days ago, Henry and I were grabbing a few of his books to take along on a trip. One of them was Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?, by the long-time children's book author Eric Carle.

The cover shows a nurturing mother and child. When Henry (age: 2-1/2) caught sight of it, he pointed to the big bear and said, "There's mommy." He looked at the smaller bear and said, "There's baby."

Then he looked at me and said: "Where's Daddy?"

What Do Fathers Want?

2009-03-13T23:22:00.002-04:00

OK, this is a little bit circular, because Cathy Arnst's post with that title, on her Business Week blog Working Parents, mentions my Psychology Today blog, About Fathers.

Even so, you should check out Cathy's post, in which she wonders why fathers choose to participate in some of the kids' school activities, but not others.

And thanks, Cathy, for the mention.

When journalists don't ask the tough questions, somebody else will

2009-03-13T23:07:00.003-04:00

And now for a brief digression: The concluding minutes of the best financial news interview of the year, and last year, too.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

More bad news for the children of older fathers

2009-03-12T17:08:00.004-04:00

I've written about this here before, and at length in an article in the current issue of Scientific American Mind.

A new study adds more weight to what should be a national concern: The children of older fathers face risks comparable to the children of older mothers. Although the issue of older fathers has received far less attention.

The new study finds subtle deficits in intelligence and other mental abilities in the children of older fathers.

Dolores Malaspina, a psychiatrist at New York University, and the focus of my Scientific American article, provided a couple of interesting quotes to the New York Times this week.

"I think there has been a bit of a cultural bias against even looking at this issue," Malaspina told the Times. "It turns out that the optimal age for being a mother is the same as the optimal age for being a father," she told the New York Times.

For more on this, see my post for Psychology Today. And the Scientific American article.

If Big Tobacco is for it, I'm against it

2009-03-11T14:24:00.003-04:00

A bill to let the FDA regulate tobacco is quietly moving ahead, temporarily lost in the noise and confusion of bailouts and budgets.

FDA regulation of cigarettes would seem to be a good thing for children (which is what nearly all people who start smoking are) and their families.

Philip Morris supports the bill. A paper by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, says the company is doing so because it "seeks to enhance its legitimacy, redefine itself as socially responsible, and alter the litigation environment."

You can read the paper if you like, and form your own conclusion. I don't know exactly what Philip Morris and Marlboro are up to, but they're very good at what they do.

So if they're for it, I'm against it. I don't need to know the details. If you feel the same way, let your senators and representatives know.

Economy forcing women to cut short--or involuntarily extend--maternity leave

2009-03-11T13:15:00.005-04:00

The Wall Street Journal reports today that some women who wanted to take extended maternity leave are being forced to go back to work much sooner than they had planned.

That is an unfortunate development; one would hope that mothers--and fathers--could stay home as long as they wanted to, or for as long as they felt their children needed them. But we don't have that luxury. And we didn't have it before the downturn.

The story does not address the fact that these women have the option to go back to work--that they can actually find jobs, when more than half a million jobs are disappearing every month.

What about moms who can't afford to take maternity leave and can't find work? Are they as important as AIG, Citibank, or the automakers? Where is the moms' bailout?

The AP took note of this problem in its story yesterday, Some laid-off women now stay-at-home moms.

From the story:

"Lucas and other laid-off women like her are involuntarily experiencing the life of a stay-at-home mom, and they are getting to know a lot more about the details of their children's daily existence. They are also discovering some of the things they have been missing..."

That sounds nice. But what if the income they're losing was necessary to pay the mortgage? I look forward to the follow-up story: Laid-off moms discover the joys of motherhood as they move out of their foreclosed homes!

Vatican condemns abortion for 9-year-old girl, allegedly abused and pregnant with twins

2009-03-08T14:54:00.010-04:00

The nine-year-old Brazilian girl weighs 80 pounds. She was allegedly abused by her stepfather, according to the BBC. She became pregnant with twins. Doctors feared that if she tried to give birth she would die. Her mother had doctors perform an abortion, allowed in these circumstances by Brazil's otherwise tough anti-abortion statutes.

The Catholic Church responded by throwing the mother and the doctors out of the church. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is Catholic, condemned the excommunications. A senior Vatican official condemned him.

The official, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re (photo) told the Italian newspaper La Stampa that the twins "had the right to live."

Did the nine-year-old girl have a right to live?

If the girl's doctors were correct, then somebody was likely to die--either the girl, or one or both of the twins.

I can't begin to imagine how I would have handled this situation, if it were my decision to make. How does one compromise when there is no compromise possible? How does one protect life when either choice could mean death for somebody?

Cardinal Re apparently had no room for such reflection: Abortion is a sin. Let the girl die, if it be God's will.

That, I suppose, is one of the gifts of faith. Decisions that should be frightfully difficult become simple. No hesitation. No exceptions.

Women increasingly following in fathers' footsteps

2009-02-25T13:08:00.005-05:00

It's been clear for a long time that about 30 percent of sons choose the same jobs as their fathers.

Now, however, something has changed. Women--whose fathers once had little influence on what kind of work they did--are increasingly following in their fathers' footsteps. That's the conclusion of a University of Maryland study, as reported by Tara Parker-Pope in her Well blog on the website of the New York Times.

The researchers analyzed data on women born between 1909 and 1977, according to Parker-Pope. Only 6 percent of women born in the first decade after 1909 took jobs similar to their fathers'. But by the last decade of the study, that figure had risen to 18 percent.

The study doesn't offer any explanation for the change, but it could be that fathers are passing on more skills to daughters now than in the past, said Judith K. Hellerstein, an associate professor of economics at the University of Maryland.

More from Parker-Pope:

Dr. Hellerstein notes that her own father’s job as a math professor influenced her career path.

“I watched my father grade math papers at night,’’ she said. “And my father made it clear to us that women could do math, which was important.’’

Why would fathers now spend more time talking about their careers with their daughters than they did in the past? Something is changing. We know that fathers are spending more time with their children now than in earlier decades; perhaps that, too, is part of the explanation.

My editorial comment: This study should encourage researchers to look more closely at fathers' influence on their kids' development.

What do little kids believe?

2009-02-24T13:00:00.002-05:00

Lisa Belkin posted today on the big and little lies we tell our children--and the tooth fairy.

I posted this comment:

As the father of a boy who’s two-and-a-half, I often wonder whether children believe all the things we say they do. Do kids really believe in the tooth fairy? I bet not. They play along because they don’t want to screw up a cash cow. (”If the ‘rents think I’m hip to this, I won’t find anything under the pillow. Tooth fairy? Bring it on!”) Kids don’t have a lot of other income-producing opportunities.

I suspect most kids figure out the Santa Claus gambit long before they admit it.

My grandfather had any number of reasons why I should eat my toast crusts, most having to do with growing up to be a man. I knew it was all made up, but I liked him, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. So I played along. I’m not sure I ever came clean.

Jailing kids for profit

2009-02-22T12:05:00.004-05:00

A Pennsylvania judge found an interesting way to supplement his income. He got a kickback every time he sent a kid to juvenile detention.

It was good business for the judge, and good business for the private, for-profit juvenile jails. The more kids they had, the more money they made.

Everybody in this scheme came out ahead--except the kids.

The New York Times relates the tale of 17-year-old Hillary Transue, a "stellar" student who spoofed the assistant principal at her Wilkes-Barre high school with a MySpace page. She even said, on the page, that it was a joke.

Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. gave her three months in juvenile detention. “I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” she told the Times.

Ciavarella sentenced 5,000 kids to jail since the scheme began in 2003. Many were first-time offenders, and some are still in detention. He and a colleague admitted to $2.6 million for jailing the kids, according to the Times.

The State Supreme Court is trying to figure out what to do with them.

The James Dean effect: Children seduced by smoking in the movies

2009-02-21T17:53:00.003-05:00

Why do children start smoking? Research suggests that about half of them start because they've seen people they admire smoking in the movies.

Think of it as the James Dean effect. The sneer, the essence of cool, and an ever-present cigarette.

But that was then. We know better now, don't we?

Apparently not.

Researchers who analyzed 1,769 films released over the past 18 years say most exposure to smoking on the big screen occurs in films rated as suitable for children, especially those rated PG-13.

Some of the findings in their report:

--Sixty-five percent of the exposure to smoking occurred in PG-13 films.

--Most G, PG, and PG-13 films include smoking. (Or, as they put it, fewer than half are smoke-free.)

--The appearance of tobacco in films has fallen by about half since 2005, but is still higher than it was in the late 1990s.

--And the number of films in which the tobacco brand is shown "has, if anything, increased," the researchers say. The brand most often displayed was Marlboro. And what brand do children favor over all others?

Marlboro.

Losing a job can hurt the kids

2009-02-18T14:53:00.006-05:00

A father's loss of a job can affect his children's self-image and their ability to earn money when they become breadwinners themselves.

In a study published last July in the Journal of Labor Economics, researchers looked at Canadian data from 1978-1999 on 39,000 pairs of fathers and sons. "We find that children whose fathers were displaced have annual earnings about 9% lower than similar children whose fathers did not experience an employment shock," they wrote. Such children are also more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social assistance, the researchers concluded.

The researchers do not know why this happens, but it's a chilling statistic to think about now, when 3 million Americans have lost their jobs in the past few months.

I learned about the study from Sue Shellenbarger's Work and Family column in the Wall Street Journal. In a column published this morning, she also noted that a father's job loss can have harmful psychological effects on his children:

"Glen Elder, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, found in studies of the Great Depression that the self-image of small children of that era was shaped by the morale of their same-sex parent. Amid the traditional gender roles of the time, young boys suffered most, from seeing their fathers deprived of work and a sense of identity, says Dr. Elder, author of Children of the Great Depression."

This has a bit of a pop-psychology ring to it; I'm not sure I believe it. (I haven't read the study, so this is a cheap shot; I plan to look it up.) But the suggestion that fathers' lay-offs can have cross-generational effects is disturbing.

Shellenbarger doesn't make too much of this. She concludes her piece by noting that some parents are equipping their children to survive hard times. That might help their financial outlook, but it's not likely to overcome any psychological fall-out in the children.

We often take fathers' breadwinning for granted. We are critical of fathers who spend too much time at work and not enough time with their children. But these studies suggest that the image of the father as breadwinner is an important touchstone for children. When that image is tarnished, something undesirable happens to the kids.

It's yet another area where we need to know more about fathers--and where existing studies are scarce.

Tilted against fathers: A Brit perspective

2009-02-17T10:24:00.006-05:00

Several months ago, Nick Clegg, a member of the British parliament and leader of the Liberal Democrats, suggested that some of the laid-off steelworkers and miners in his district (near where The Full Monty was set) should take jobs as childminders. (That's Britspeak for day-care workers.) "I was stunned," he writes today in The Times online, "when my office received complaints that it was inappropriate work for men, with a barely disguised hint of suspicion about why men would want to spend so much time with young children."

Only 1 percent of childminders are men, an indication, Clegg says, that Britain clings too closely to traditional notions of what constitutes men's work.

And it clings too closely to traditional notions of a man's role in the family. In England, mothers can take a year of parental leave. Fathers get two weeks. "This split is out of step with the reality of many modern families, and discourages fathers from making a commitment to the care of their own children," he writes.

During World War II, he notes, women flooded the workforce, filling all kind of jobs, including those traditionally held by men. In a suggestion as apt on this side of the Atlantic as that one, he suggests that it's time for us to re-invent ourselves again:

"Many men will be forced to let go of their earlier identities and try something new--like the unemployed car worker in the West Midlands who explained on Newsnight last week that he was retraining to become a social worker. And many women may become the only family breadwinner for the first time. For many couples this will be unsettling and deeply disruptive to the settled patterns of life, work and marriage."

Unsettling, to be sure, but essential. Those settled patterns have kept too many of us--mothers and fathers alike--in cages.

It's a surprisingly thoughtful and perceptive piece, for a politician. And it's the kind of talk we could use more of here in the colonies, as well.

A kiss to build a dream on

2009-02-14T13:17:00.002-05:00

It's still the same old story--but a kiss is not just a kiss.

For men, it's a chance to assess a woman's fertility. For both men and women, it's a chance to screen a potential mate.

Here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, researchers said that kissing is related not only to sex, but also to romantic love and attachment--by virtue of the changes it produces in the brain.

The sex drive encourages us to seek out partners. Romantic love encourages us to focus on one of 'em. And attachment keeps us around to rear the child that might be the product of romantic love. It's all about reproduction, and kissing is a vital tool.

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has taken the research a step further by asking the question: Why do we want to kiss some people and not others?

She has identified four different temperments, each linked to a different hormone or neurotransmitter in the brain. "These chemical systems do make a different in mate choice," she said.

The difference can be felt almost instantaneously, she said. In roughly two-thirds of men and women, the first kiss can kill the relationship. The explanation, in Fisher's view, is that it tells the partners, unconsciously, that the person they're kissing is not a good choice.

She also believes that romantic love can last a long time "...if you kiss the right person."

To me, this is another example of how behaviors that we might think are a product of our social or cultural environment are deeply rooted in evolution and biology.

What we know is that we kiss because we like it. What Fisher and others are telling us is that we kiss because we must.

Infants' gestures linked to larger vocabulary

2009-02-12T13:48:00.011-05:00

Kids who make broader use of gestures to communicate when they are 14 months old have larger vocabularies later, when they start school.

That's from a study presented here in Chicago, where I'm spending the next few days at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The researchers who did the study said the findings on gestures could help explain why wealthier kids have larger vocabularies than poor kids. Researchers have known that wealthy mothers speak to their children more than do poor mothers. The new research shows that the wealthy mothers use more gestures, too--giving their kids an added advantage in language development.

Psychology Prof. Susan Goldin-Meadow (photo) and post-doctoral fellow Meredith Rowe, of the University of Chicago, said they have not proven that broader use of gestures causes better language development; so far they have merely shown the connection. But they are pursuing the idea that the use of gestures does indeed foster language development.

"The act of gesturing may change the mind," Goldin-Meadow said at a press conference.

The researchers observed mothers and children in their homes, video-taping 90 minutes of normal interaction. The key factor was not the number of gestures, or how often they were used, but the variety of meanings conveyed with gestures. A broader "vocabulary" of gestures was the thing that predicted a larger vocabulary when the kids were nearly 5 years old.

Update: Where are the fathers?

As I've noted before, far more studies are done on mothers than on fathers. Of the 50 parents in this study, 49 were mothers. "We looked at primary caregivers," Rowe said when I asked her about that. Is it possible that fathers use gestures differently? Might they have a greater--or lesser--effect on children's vocabularies than mothers do? How can anyone know if researchers don't take a look?

The Nadya Suleman Family website

2009-02-11T15:54:00.003-05:00

Now you can make online donations at the Nadya Suleman Family website, where you can also contact Nadya's public relations firm.

Does octuplets' mother think she is Angelina Jolie?

2009-02-11T10:02:00.002-05:00

Frightening picture. Check out the item on HuffingtonPost.

Missing Person: The octuplets' father

2009-02-10T10:43:00.003-05:00

When we think about the Suleman octuplets, we might catch ourselves saying that they don't have a father. She's a single mother, right?

We all understand that children can't be conceived without sperm, so, yes, in a technical sense, they have a father, or fathers.

But perhaps there's more to it than that. Adopted children often become very curious about their biological parents, and sometimes go looking for them.

I can't speak from personal experience, but it seems that even if a father is represented only by an anonymously donated sperm, the notion of father means something important to us. An obvious point, of course, is that the sperm is not simply a trigger for conception; it brings with it a huge, vitally important genetic inheritance.

So even that anonymous sperm donor has a huge influence on a child. Most of us want to know who we are, where we came from, and so on. Our fathers, even if unknown and anonymous, are a large part of the answer to those questions.

In the case of the Suleman octuplets, the story may be more compicated than an anonymous donor. Angela Suleman, Nadya Suleman's mother, told the Associated Press that all 16 of Nadya's children came from the same sperm donor, but declined to identify him.

The AP found a David Solomon listed as the father on the birth certificates of the four oldest children.

Will the children someday want to know who their father is? Will they be angry with their mother for creating a situation in which they don't know him? She's had 16 children who might never know their father, or fathers. And that might not matter. Or it might.

Sad truth about child's suicide

2009-02-06T08:37:00.003-05:00

This morning I was quoted in the Chicago Tribune, talking about the suicide of a 10-year-old boy who was found hanging in a bathroom in an Evanston, Ill. school.

Just to expand on what I said in the story: It's natural that we would want to find reasons for suicide, and that's what we do. "Why did this child commit suicide?" We speculate about his relationships with his classmates, his family situation, his treatment by his teachers, and anything else we think might have pushed him to suicide. But the answer almost always is that people who commit suicide, children and adults, have a mental illness. It's a symptom of a disease.

All of are sad sometimes, even despondent. We suffer horrendous calamities and setbacks. But most of us do not commit suicide. The ones who do have a mental illness, often an undiagnosed one.

The question we should ask after a child's suicide, or any suicide, is not "Why?" The question we should ask is: When will we do the research and provide the mental health care that could have prevented this?

Involved dads improve kids' IQs, social mobility

2009-02-05T11:08:00.005-05:00

A study of more than 10,000 British children who have been followed for more than 50 years suggests that the children of involved fathers have higher IQs and greater social mobility as adults.

The study says fathers have the same salutary effects on both sons and daughters, even though previous studies have suggested that fathers become more involved with sons than with daughters.

The study, published in a recent edition of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, also found that the beneficial effects of fathers are more pronounced in wealthier families than in poor families.

The study’s author, Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University, notes that many studies have now found a link between father involvement and children’s well-being. Among the things that involved fathers can do is improve their kids’ cognitive ability, achievement in school, psychological adjustment, and social competence. The children of involved fathers have also been found to have fewer conduct problems.

Not all of these studies are on firm scientific ground, Nettle says. In some of them, the data on father’s involvement and kids’ outcomes comes from the same person, who might unwittingly slant the results.

But there is enough evidence, he says, to conclude that the beneficial consequences of fathers’ involvement are real.

Interestingly, Nettle found that it wasn’t merely the presence of the father that made a difference. It was his involvement with the children. The children of families with uninvolved fathers did no better than children in families in which the father was absent.

It’s not known, Nettle says, why some fathers become more involved with their children than other fathers do. Nor do researchers understand what is happening psychologically in the children to produce the beneficial effects.

This study has limitations, too, as do many of the others. It does not put the matter to rest. But it should encourage further research. Clearly something is going on with fathers and with children. And in order to take better advantage of that relationship, we need to know more about exactly what is going on.

Octuplets story takes a dark turn

2009-01-31T09:30:00.006-05:00

CBS News has reported that the family of the California octuplets had abandoned a home and filed for bankruptcy a year-and-a-half ago.

It is also widely being reported that the mother of the octuplets, whose identity hasn't been revealed, already had six children, between about two and seven years old.

The bankrupt woman, who is also apparently homeless, now has 14 children under eight years old.

The birth of the octuplets was not planned, but it also was not an accident. According to reports, she had eight embryos implanted in her womb.

Although it's tempting to judge this woman, we should resist. We don't know the facts yet, and it's likely we will learn more in the coming days.

But she was evidently in the care of a fertility specialist. If you're tempted to judge that specialist, go ahead--give in. It's even clearer now than it was when I first posted on this story: This is a case, if not of malpractice, than of a serious error in medical judgment.

Consider the future for these children. They weighed about one to three pounds each. According to a fact sheet from the March of Dimes, babies weighing less than 2 pounds, 3 ounces will "require treatment with oxygen, surfactant and mechanical assistance to help them breathe" and because they are too young to suck, they must be fed intravenously. It continues: "About 25 percent of these very premature babies develop serious lasting disabilities, and up to half may have milder problems, such as learning and behavioral problems."

They are also at risk for respiratory distress, bleeding in the brain, heart failure, severe intestinal disease, blindness, anemia, and infections.

The birth, first reported as a medical miracle, is, in truth, a tragedy.

Unscientific "survey" reinforces father stereotypes

2009-01-30T09:43:00.006-05:00

Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog for the New York Times reposts a story on parenting.com that claims to find rampant anger against fathers in what is presented as a "survey."

It's not a survey; there is nothing scientific about it. It's merely a collection of opinions from, as far as we can tell, an unscientific panel of women assembled by parenting.com.

Yet Belkin calls the results "data" Here are some she cites:

--46 percent of respondents “get irate with their husbands once a week or more.”
--44 percent are “peeved” that their partners “often don’t notice what needs to be done around the house or with the kids.”
--31 percent say the get little or no “help” from their husbands with chores.
--33 percent say their husbands “aren’t shouldering equal responsibility."

This isn't scientific "data," as I've already said. But even if it were, let's look at what it says. Try turning the numbers around. If 46 percent of mothers get irate once a week, that means 54 percent--more than half--do not. More than half are not "peeved" that their partners don't notice what needs to be done.

And the next two bits of "data" are even more interesting, if we turn them around: Two thirds of respondents say they do get help from their husbands and their husbands ARE shouldering equal responsibility.

I wish the results were scientific -- because fathers actually look pretty good.

Autism, schizophrenia in children of older fathers

2009-01-28T16:21:00.006-05:00

A 40-year-old man has the same chance of fathering a child with schizophrenia as does a 40-year-old woman of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome.

Many of us are aware of the risks of Down syndrome in the children of older mothers. But who knows that the risk of schizophrenia looms as large in the children of older fathers? And why don't we know?

The number of older fathers is on the rise, as I detail in an article I've just written for Scientific American Mind. That means that the incidence of autism and schizophrenia is likely to rise.

Charles J. Epstein, past president of the college of medical genetics, said he often doesn't tell fathers because nothing can be done about it. “To put it out there every time somebody comes to you for counseling probably engenders more fear than light,” Epstein said.

Why then all the fuss about Down syndrome in the children of older women, when the risks for the children of older fathers are about the same? “You bring up Down syndrome, because you get sued if you don’t,” Epstein said.

Older fathers do have an option, despite what Epstein says: They can choose not to have children. But they can't make that decision unless they are told of the risks.

California octuplets: Another view

2009-01-28T10:38:00.006-05:00

There is something undeniably appealing about the birth of octuplets in California this week, something we would like to celebrate. Note the smiles on the faces of the doctors who delivered them.

But let me add a dissenting view, if I may. No information has been released on how the children were conceived. But we probably shouldn't be celebrating this. What it represents, most likely, is a horrible case of medical malpractice.

As Michael Tucker, a researcher and clinical embryologist in Atlanta, told the LA Times, "if a medical practitioner had anything to do with it, there's some degree of inappropriate medical therapy there."

These children face an extremely difficult future. If they survive, they are likely to have multiple handicaps, at least the smallest of them.

So while we wish the family and the children the best, we might also supply the corrective that this seemingly miraculous birth is likely to have a sad outcome over the long term.

911 call records 17-year-old's death under restraints

2009-01-27T15:12:00.006-05:00

Seventeen-year-old Faith Finley was a rebellious teen who had been in the custody of Summit County Children Services for months. In December, she suffocated while being restrained. The death has been ruled a homicide, but no one has yet been charged.

Now Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has called for a new policy that could lead to a ban on the kind of face-down restraint that kept Faith Finley pinned to the floor.

Workers at Parmadale Family Services in Parma, Ohio, called 911 while trying to revive Finley. Recordings of the calls, on the website of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, are chilling.

Child Support: Man forced to pay for child not his

2009-01-26T10:58:00.007-05:00

A 19-year Army veteran, on his third tour in Iraq, is being forced to pay child support for a boy that isn't his.

Master Sgt. Christopher Sprowson's first wife had an affair, became pregnant, and gave birth to the boy, now 13. Genetic tests proved the child was not his. But a court says that doesn't matter. From the Kansas City Star:

According to Kansas law, a husband is the “presumed father” of his wife’s children — even if the children were fathered by another man.

Because the boy’s mother could not tell the court who the father was, the judge ruled Sprowson had to pay.

Sprowson's ex-wife said she never sought child support and would forgo the money. But the state required the payments because his ex-wife once received welfare. It's the state of Kansas that wants the money, to recover the welfare payments to Sprowson's ex-wife.

On Jan. 21, Sprowson's current wife, Karey, asked the legislature to change the law. The state wants more than $10,000, which Sprowson, and his three children, can't afford, Karey said.

She said the court has ordered that Sprowson's military pay be garnished to satisfy the debt, and that his tax refund will be seized.

Child Support: How much is too much?

2009-01-22T22:45:00.005-05:00

My Psychology Today post on the legal wrangling over the new Massachusetts child-support guidelines is attracting a lot of comments. I tried not take sides on the dispute, but merely to ask whether the guidelines are fair. How do we determine what's a fair child-support payment?

It's not an easy question to answer, and not one that lawyers are equipped to answer.

The people who have the expertise to even take a wild stab at establishing fair payment guidelines would be economists, demographers, or social scientists. Not lawyers. Yet it is lawyers and judges who are charged with devising guidelines and implementing them.

This question wouldn't interest me much except for one thing. This is not just about money. This is about relationships between non-custodial parents, usually fathers, and their children. Rancor or economic disparity caused by faulty guidelines can damage a relationship between a father and his children.

None of us should want that. Not even the most wounded, angry, or vengeful parent. Sadly, however, in practice, children's well-being is often sacrificed by battling parents.

We want child-support guidelines that can ease that fighting, not exacerbate it.

2009-01-20T15:14:00.004-05:00

So: We have a new father with young children in the White House. The way he behaves as a father might not be as important as his official duties. Or it might be the most important thing he does.

From President Obama's Father's Day speech last June:

"Life doesn't count for much unless you're willing to do your small part to leave our children--all of our children--a better world."

The Wrestler

2009-01-16T17:52:00.006-05:00

The trailer for The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke, was very effective, but not in the way Fox Searchlight probably intended--it convinced me I did not want to see the movie. Rourke looked almost unwatchable. That face made me cringe.

Later, I changed my mind. I still did not want to see it, but I felt that I should. And a few days ago, Elizabeth and I went to see it. I found the film almost haunting, and Rourke's performance was extraordinary. Elizabeth felt the same way.

It has a small, but poignant plot strand related to fatherhood. Rourke tells the pole-dancer who's his only friend (Marisa Tomei) that he has a daughter, "but she don't like me very much."

Later, he makes an attempt to reconnect. (No spoilers here--this is all in the trailer.) "I just don't want you to hate me," he tells her, erupting in tears.

It's a little beyond what most of us experience with our kids. But there's something very real there.

See it.

The Father of the Future?

2009-01-15T18:54:00.006-05:00

O.K., if you wondered whether change was coming, get a load o' this. And fasten your seatbelt.

(Thanks to Deb at Girl With Pen for this photo.)

The Exception Magazine reprints Fathers and Families posts

2009-01-15T17:49:00.003-05:00

The Exception Magazine is an online publication that says it is "committed to the highest standards of journalistic excellence," and to "Maine values." I'm not sure what Maine values are, but I have spent a lot of time in Maine on assignment as a reporter for the AP and Business Week, and I like the place. So I'm buying into Maine values.

Kidding aside, this looks like a serious effort to publish good journalism online.

And I'm happy to say that The Exception Magazine has republished my post on fathers and progesterone, and has asked about reprinting others.

Fathers and Families named one of 100 best gender blogs

2009-01-15T17:42:00.003-05:00

The website bachelorsdegreeonline.com--a directory of online colleges and degree programs--likes to make lists. (Presumably to help draw attention to the site.) Its blog offers 100 tips to take your book club to the next level (a little frightening, no?) and 100 great sites for celebrating black history month.

It has also posted a list of what it believes are the top 100 gender-studies blogs. And Fathers and Families makes the list! (OK, we're number 82. But still.)

Thanks for the recognition.

And check out the list. It includes a lot of blogs I'm not familiar with.

Bailing out the economy--and children

2009-01-15T14:51:00.004-05:00

The Washington Post reports today that requests for state health insurance for children are soaring in the Washington, D.C. area. From the Post's story:

The increases are particularly pronounced in the region's largest and wealthiest jurisdictions as employers cut benefits and eliminate jobs. In Fairfax County, for instance, requests for the state's insurance program for children, Family Access to Medical Insurance Security (FAMIS), were up 16 percent between November 2007 and November 2008. In Alexandria, caseloads increased 20 percent, and in Loudoun, they were up 16.5 percent.

It's not just the poorest families that can no longer afford insurance. The House has just passed an expansion of the state children's health insurance programs, and the Senate will look at the issue soon. President-elect Barack Obama has said he will sign it.

The Post's story today suggests that health care reform should not take a back seat to financial and auto-company bailouts. Interestingly, in last week's otherwise discouraging Labor Department unemployment figures, health care was one of only two industries that actually added jobs last month.

The new administration has a chance to boost an industry--health care--that not only is doing well, but directly affects our children.

Interestingly, the other industry that also added jobs last month--at a time when the nation lost 524,000 jobs overall--was education. That's another that is aimed directly at our children.

Boosting spending for children would be a wonderful way to stimulate the economy.

Progesterone and bad fathering

2009-01-14T16:21:00.005-05:00

The hormone progesterone serves vital functions in women who are becoming mothers. It helps keep pregnancies healthy, and it primes pregnant women to show maternal behavior at birth.

That's been known for a long time. What hasn't been clear is the role of progesterone in men--in particular, how it affects their paternal behavior.

It's considered bad form to knock out progesterone in men to see what happens (or to shoot 'em up with it). But Teresa Horton of Northwestern University has done those experiments with male mice.

She has shown (in a chapter in this recent book) that when the effects of progesterone are blocked in male mice, they become better fathers. Progesterone, in other words, has the opposite effect in men that it has in women: It encourages good mothering, and bad fathering. Male mice whose progesterone is blocked are better fathers and they are less likely to kill their pups.

When males are given progesterone concentrations similar to what females have during pregnancy, they become infanticidal, and it lasts for at least five days after the concentration is reduced.

Researchers have known since the 1930s that progesterone was important in maintaining pregnancy. But it hasn't been studied in fathers until very recently. Why? For my speculation, see my previous posts, Where are the Fathers?

Are all stay-at-home Dads "lost"?

2009-01-12T14:03:00.004-05:00

A story in yesterday's New York Times talks about the "difficulties" faced by very wealthy Wall Streeters who have lost their jobs and can't find another $800,000-a-year job. It's a readjustment, they say.

The story focuses on a couple in affluent Darien, Connecticut, Scott and Tracey Berry, who talk about how they are adapting to the lost income. She's gone back to work, he tabulates spending receipts each week and puts on an Oxford shirt to sit in front of his home computer and look for work.

Except for a passing mention of waking the kids up to get ready for school and saving for college, the article doesn't discuss how Scott Berry's job loss and Tracey's return to work affect their parenting.

But the headline is interesting. It's not "Couples Cope with Financial Meltdown," or any such phrase focusing on the marriage and finances. Rather, it's this: "Daddy's Home, and a Bit Lost."

The headline writer was apparently eager to play on the cliche of the hapless, unemployed dad, even though that was not in the story--not even hinted at. The story was about Berry as a husband. And he didn't seem particularly lost.

But the myth persists. We all know that a stay-at-home father must be "lost" or confused or inadequate. Don't we?

Affordable health care--harder than it looks

2009-01-12T10:25:00.003-05:00

In 1986, Congress kindly created a program that allows workers who are laid-off or leave their jobs to remain on their employers' health insurance plans for up to 18 months, until they can find another job--and a new health plan.

The problem? Hardly anyone can afford it. Congress didn't say anything about the cost of such plans. A new report from the nonprofit consumer group Families USA demonstrates that COBRA isn't even close to affordable for most families.

The report found that COBRA costs, on average $1,069 per month for family coverage. Unemployment benefits average $1,278 per month. COBRA would eat up 84 percent of the unemployment benefits.

See my post for Psychology Today.

Unemployment rate at 16-year high

2009-01-10T09:03:00.006-05:00

As of Friday's Labor Department report, 11.1 million Americans are unemployed, 50 percent more than a year ago.

The unemployment rate is now higher than at any time since the end of the administration of George Bush, Sr., 16 years ago.

The New York Times leads the paper with this story this morning and devotes an entire inside page to analyzing the consequences, the effects on the economy, and so on. Our concern here, however, is the effect on fathers, mothers--and especially children.

Every lost job represents another family that could tumble into poverty. And the consequences of poverty on children have been well documented. Poor children are more likely to drop out of school, get involved in crime, abuse drugs or alcohol, and wind up in jail.

Recessions and unemployment have real consequences for parents and children. Sometimes it's important to take the smaller, family-level view, than to focus exclusively on the economic statistics and forecasts.

The greedy Wall Street financiers whose reckless lending and fraud caused this collapse--and the government regulators who failed to stop them--deserve the blame for what happens to perhaps millions of children, whose opportunities are--right now--being snatched away from them.

Latest figures on kids in juvenile detention

2009-01-09T14:46:00.007-05:00

The Justice Department has just released its latest figures on the number of American children held in detention.

The figures date from 2004. (It's now 2009, five years later; apparently collecting figures on juvenile detention was a very low priority in the Bush Justice Department.) They show that 94,875 children under 21 were being held in 2,809 detention centers. Fewer than half of the centers are publicly operated, but they held more than two-thirds of the juvenile offenders.

Of those 2,809 detention centers, 860--or 31 percent--were at or over their capacity, or relied on makeshift beds.

The facilities reported 27 deaths over 12 months, of which 16 were suicides.

A bad--really bad!--divorce

2009-01-08T10:40:00.008-05:00

I've always maintained that the common phrase "bad divorce" (as in, "Joe's going through a really bad divorce") is redundant. I've heard people talk of good divorces, but mostly I don't believe them.

But here's one that justifies the label "bad divorce." Or "unbelievably bad divorce."

From Newsday:

"When Dr. Richard Batista's wife needed a kidney, he gave her one of his.

And now that Dawnell Batista has filed for a divorce, he wants it back."

Dr. Batista's attorney said that if she won't return the kidney, his client will settle for $1.5 million in what he says is partial compensation.

Robert Veatch, a medical ethicist at Georgetown University, told Newsday that it's illegal for an organ to be bought or sold in the United States, or exchanged for anything of value. Legally, "when you give something, you can't get it back," he said.

Taking the kidney out would force Dawnell Batista to go on to dialysis, or have another transplant. Or it could kill her. Presumably Dr. Batista, a surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center, knows that. And yet...

Medical ethics aside, this is what I would call a bad, bad divorce.

2009-01-07T13:40:00.005-05:00

Minnesota is considering changing its custody laws to presume that parents will share physical custody. That does not require shared custody; but it establishes that as the presumption, unless negotiations or a judge's ruling lead elsewhere. Only a handful of states--notably Iowa--have moved in this direction. Fathers' advocates generally like it, believing that it gives them more rights following divorce. Women's advocates are generally unhappy about it, for the same reason. And experts are divided.

And a study out of England suggests that good fathering has benefits. Here's the gist of it, from New Scientist:

"The more effort a father invests in his children, the smarter they are as kids and more successful as adults, new research shows. And highly educated fathers make even more of a difference than less educated dads, all things being equal."

Getting child support right

2009-01-06T16:51:00.007-05:00

A federal judge on Monday threw out a legal challenge to new Massachusetts child support guidelines.

According to an article by the Associated Press, Judge Douglas Woodlock denied the request for an injunction to block the guidelines, which took effect Jan. 1. He said it would be inappropriate for the federal court to address questions over state policy.

The suit was brought by Fathers and Families, a Boston organization that seeks to reform child custody and support.

Dr. Ned Holstein, the executive director of Fathers and Families, told the AP that the group would probably refile the lawsuit in state court.

He is concerned that the new guidelines will boost child support payments to a level many fathers cannot afford. "Somewhere there has to be relief for people who are going to be driven into poverty," he told the AP.

Massachusetts chief administrative Judge Robert Mulligan, who oversaw the drafting of the new guidelines, said in a statement Monday that he is "very confident...that the changes are in the best interests of children across the state."

Cheerleading Dad

2009-01-06T15:56:00.005-05:00

Thanks to my buddy Deborah Siegel at Girl With Pen for the heads-up on this video. It's funny, and who could disagree with the message? But it sparked some unfavorable--and understandable--concern at Girl With Pen.

Watch the video and let me know what you think: Is a government campaign to push responsible fatherhood (a Bush initiative, as it turns out) a good idea?

Study: Where are the fathers?

2009-01-05T15:29:00.011-05:00

I'm thinking of beginning a series of posts under the title above. The idea is to look at studies that might naturally have included fathers--but which examined only mothers.

For example: A recent study by Deborah Laible and Tia Panfile in Child Development looked at conflicts between mothers and toddlers when the kids were 30 months old, and at 36 months old. It found that mother-child conflict was marked by more resolution and compromise when mothers and toddlers were more securely attached. And it found that children's temperatments were related to the kind of mother-child conflict, and its frequency. Interesting.

You might argue that it's fair to look at mothers and children in this study, and perhaps to study fathers at another time, in another paper. And I wouldn't disagree. But the setup to the paper talks about parents, not mothers. And yet the research was done exclusively on mothers.

From the study's introductory paragraphs:

"Conflict between young children and their parents [emphasis mine]" is normal and frequent during the preschool years.

"Parents with young children are engaged in conflict with them on average between 3 ½ to 15 times an hour."

"Children may learn important lessons out of these early conflicts with parents."

I have no business telling Laible and Panfile what kind of study to do; if they want to study mothers exclusively, that's up to them. But all the background they cite relates to parents, not just mothers. Did they think about including fathers? I asked Laible in an email.

"We did do audio recordings across dinner and dinner often included mothers and fathers," she emailed back. "In listening to the audiotapes, it did seem like the nature of father-toddler conflict was very similar to mother-toddler conflict." She said she would expect similar findings with fathers. "There were also some interesting three-way conflicts with fathers, mothers, and toddlers," she said.

That might have prompted her and Panfile to look at fathers; but no. "Honestly," she wrote, "we didn't look at fathers at all or take them into account."

The study was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Fathers' group sues to block Mass child support guidelines

2009-01-02T17:45:00.004-05:00

Fathers & Families, a Massachusetts advocacy group, filed suit in Federal District Court on Dec. 31 to block new child-support guidelines in Massachusetts.

The group says the new guidelines are not based on data on the costs of raising children and are therefore "arbitrary and capricious."

Fathers & Families says the new guidelines will boost child support payments substantially. Some might argue that such a boost is long overdue; Fathers & Families argues that the payments will be far too high under the proposed guidelines. I can't sort the arguments out here, but clearly one would think such guidelines ought to be based on data, not on some theoretical notion that payments are currently too low.

The executive director of Fathers & Families, Dr. Ned Holstein, served on the task force that devised the new guidelines, and he filed a tough minority report opposing the task force's conclusions.

Here's Holstein, from a post on the Fathers & Families website: “These new guidelines will create a ‘castle versus a hovel’ situation for kids. These increases are radical and unexplained. They come at the worst possible moment, just as a bad recession is causing people to lose their jobs or suffer declining incomes. Our lawsuit is a way of saying, ‘Let’s pause and reconsider the wisdom of these controversial changes at this moment.’”

The bottom line, says Holstein, is that the new guidelines will harm children. "Kids want to live with both parents after divorce, and we want them to be well cared for in both homes."

Read the legal complaint. Links to the new guidelines and the task force's majority report are here.

2008-12-17T16:56:00.003-05:00

According to a Dec. 15 article on Newsweek online, fathers are getting a larger share of child custody than they did even 20 years ago.

"There's no longer the same presumption that young children must be with their mother," Leslie Drozd, editor of the Journal of Child Custody, tells Newsweek.

Courts are "more inclined to disregard gender and look at who's the better parent," says Gary Nickelson, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

Only 5 percent of divorced spouses opt for joint physical custody, the article says. But a forthcoming study in the journal Family Relations says non-resident fathers are spending more time with their kids. "In 1976," says Newsweek, "only 18 percent of these dads saw their children (ages 6-12) at least once a week. By 2002, that number had risen to 31 percent."

The story was written by Susanna Schrobsdorff, who leads off by talking about her own divorce and the decision she and her ex-husband made to seek joint physical custody. It's a nice piece of reporting and writing.

2008-12-13T18:05:00.003-05:00

I received the following comment from Betsey Stevenson, the creator of the divorce calculator (see my post below). I haven't had time to digest this yet, but thought I'd put it up while I'm thinking about it.

Here 'tis:

I fear that the divorce calculator whirled through the blogosphere so quickly that what it actually is intended to measure got lost. The criteria that I use are not based on a theory of what predicts divorce and I am not arguing that these are the most important predictors of divorce.

What the calculator does is uses large scale data collected by the US Census to calculate what percent of people actually divorce. We can do this for all people in the US currently (i.e. what percent of all adults have experienced a divorce) or we can do it by criteria (what percent of college educated people who married in their 30s and during the last 20 years had divorced within 10 years). Either way, the numbers are just facts. While facts can be a whole lot simpler than the theories that social scientists come up with to understand divorce, I believe that facts have their place and it can be informative to know them.

Unfortunately large, representative datasets containing information on marital history rarely (ever?) contain information on the many important correlates of divorce. Indeed, as I argue in much of my research on divorce, understanding the causal implications of divorce is difficult precisely because the factors predicting divorce are typically not collected in datasets making it impossible for us to control for them (i.e. having an alcoholic spouse likely increases the chances of divorce and is probably bad for the kids education) and also difficult for us to even know the facts regarding their association with divorce rates.

2008-12-11T10:17:00.004-05:00

When men become boys, they pass through what Michael Kimmel calls "guyland": It's all about drinking, sex, video games, sports, music videos, shock jocks, porn, pizza, and beer. It's also, Kimmel says, about date rape, party rape, and gang bangs.

Serious and disturbing stuff. Kimmel is a sociologist and one of the leading authorities on men and masculinity. His books include Manhood in America: A Cultural History, The Politics of Manhood and Changing Men. His newest book, Guyland, is about this transition from boyhood to manhood, and it isn't pretty.

He's talking about young men, mostly white and middle class, from the ages of 16 to 26. Kimmel makes an important point: Many young men do like sports, video games, pizza, and beer. And some of them commit crimes against women.

But Kimmel doesn't seem to qualify his broad, unhappy portrait. "Guyland is the world in which young men live," he says, without qualification. Some men? Most men? Kimmel doesn't say, leaving the implication that they all pass through this unpleasant--and criminal--stage.

And here's where Kimmel really rankles: Who is responsible for boys being attracted to guyland?

Fathers.

His favorite example of how fathers fail their children is an anecdote about "Josh," a 21-year-old college student. Josh calls home, and his father answers. "Hey, Dad, how are you?" Josh asks. His father says, "Hold on, I'll get your mother."

That's sad. And I'm sure, in some homes, it happens. But I doubt it's common. I don't have any evidence to suggest it's rare; but my criticism of Kimmel is that he doesn't have any evidence to suggest it's frequent.

"Many dads willingly check out of their sons' lives far too soon," he says. How many?

"Their sons live out the lives that they, the dads, wish they could have lived until they turned 30." How many dads wish that?

After a description of predatory sexual behavior by high school boys who had sex with girls as young as 10, Kimmel says their mothers were outraged. But their fathers "seemed almost proud."

How many fathers were "almost proud" that their sons were having predatory sex at 10?

A friend of mine knows Kimmel and assures me that he doesn't mean to say that all boys are rapists, or anything of the sort. I don't know him; I only know his book. And I don't like it.

Aka Pygmies: The world's best fathers?

2008-12-09T16:18:00.002-05:00

The Aka pygmies are hunter-gatherers who live in the southwestern Central African Republic and northern People's Republic of the Congo, not quite in the heart of Africa, but close. Here is anthropologist Barry S. Hewlett's description of how Aka parents behave with their children (from his book, Intimate Fathers):

"Aka infancy is indulgent: Infants are held almost constantly, they have skin-to-skin contact most of the day as Aka seldom wear shirts or blouses, and they are nursed on demand and attended to immediately if they fuss or cry. Aka parents interact with and stimulate their infants throughout the day. They talk to, play with, show affection to, and transmit subsistence skills to their infants during the day. I was rather surprised to find parents teaching their eight-to-twelve-month-old infants how to use small pointed digging sticks, throw small spears, use miniature axes with sharp metal blades, and carry small baskets..."

Most of this happens when parents are out hunting game with nets, Hewlett says. Yes, the infants go with them. But, says Hewlett, despite all this attention and contact, the Aka are not a child-centered society. More:

"American parents allow their children to interrupt their conversations with other adults; they ask their children what they want to eat and try to accommodate other desires of the children. Aka society is adult-centered in that parents seldom stop their activities to pay undivided attention to their children. If an infant fusses or urinates on a parent who is talking to others or playing the drums, the parent continues his activity while gently rocking the infant or wiping the urine off with a nearby leaf."

What, I wonder, can we learn from this?

Divorce risk calculator--try it!

2008-12-08T12:03:00.000-05:00

Seems as though it would be tough to assess a couple's risk of divorce. Imagine the data you would have to collect--vast troves on their backgrounds, extended interviews with the parties involved, careful observation in the home.

What would it take, exactly, to assess the risks?

According to economics Betsey Stevenson--not much. Go to her divorce calculator, and fill in your gender, when you married and how old you were, your education level, and how long you've been married. And it will tell you your risk of divorce.

"The point is," says her significant other, the Freakonomics blogger Justin Wolfers, "that factors like age at first marriage and education tell us a lot about divorce risk." He adds, however, that if you're single and contemplating marriage, the stats won't help you. "These divorce risks are useful as statistical forecasts (even if they can’t answer the “what if” question) of how divorce risks change if you delay your marriage."

I guess we're not as subtle and complicated as we think we are...

When Welfare and Child Support Collide: Nobody Wins

2008-12-06T09:19:00.001-05:00

A law-review article looking at child support under the nation's welfare system has exploded some of the myths of so-called deadbeat dads.

The collective national child-support debt owed by parents who don't have custody of the kids--usually fathers--is at least $105 billion.

And here are the surprises: Half of that is owed not to children, but to state and federal governments, which require welfare mothers to sign over their child support to the government.

Surprise number two: Two-thirds of the fathers who owe this money earn less than $10,000 per year.

Surprise number three: In most cases of debt, no more than 25 percent of the debtor's salary can be garnished. But for child support, there is a federal exception: Welfare agencies can garnish up to 65 percent of a debtor's salary, even if it's less than $10,000 per year.

And the kicker: The welfare/child support system is designed so that welfare can recover some of its costs by taking child support money away from children. But that's a failure. In 2006, governments collected $2 billion in assigned child support. And it cost them $5.6 billion in administrative costs to collect it.

Drug money and bipolar disorder in children

2008-12-01T15:46:00.000-05:00

Dr. Joseph Biederman, a leading authority on pediatric bipolar disorder, has come under sharp criticism for recent disclosures that he accepted large amounts of money from drug makers who sell medicines to treat that disorder. The disclosure of the financial ties raises questions about whether Biederman is, as a New York Times editorial put it, an expert or a shill.

Clearly, Biederman was at fault. He should have made the drug-money connection public, and he certainly should have notified Harvard University, where he works.

I worry, though, that news about this bad behavior on Biederman's fault will mean that fewer children with bipolar disorder will be treated. Here's a comment I posted on Nancy Shute's smart parenting blog for U.S. News:

Here's the problem with stories about conflict of interest: Yes, Dr. Joseph Biederman did extensive research on bipolar disorder in children, encouraging more widespread diagnosis of the disorder. Yes, he took a lot of money from a drug maker interested in selling medications to treat the disorder. Yes, there was a clear conflict of interest.

But does that mean bipolar disorder in kids is a trumped up or phony diagnosis? Not necessarily. Sadly, much of the coverage of this conflict-of-interest story implies that bipolar disorder in kids is not a real disease, but the product of a conspiracy between a researcher and a drug company. And the likely consequence? Fewer kids will be diagnosed with this disorder, and fewer will be treated for it. If it is in fact a real disorder, which is the majority view among child psychiatrists, these untreated children will suffer.

FDA panel criticizes use of antipsychotics in kids

2008-11-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

An FDA expert panel says it is concerned that antipsychotic drugs are being overused in children, the New York Times reports today.

The committee said that more than 389,000 children and teens were treated last year with Risperdal, one of a class of drugs known as atypical antipsychotics, which were thought to have fewer side-effects that traditional antipsychotics. Of those who received the drug, 240,000 were less than 13 years old, the committee was told.

The Bush FDA wants to continue routine monitoring of the safety of these drugs. But the committee rebelled. "This committee is frustrated. And we need to find a way to accommodate this concern," said panel member Dr. Leon Dare of the University of Alabama School of Medicine.

The problem with routine monitoring--this is me talking, not the committee--is that there really isn't such a thing. Doctors are supposed to report problems to the FDA, and the FDA is supposed to compile those reports and watch for evidence of problems. But doctors often don't see the problems, or don't report them if they do. And the FDA has few resources to pursue these reports.

"Monitoring" suggests to me an active process: Actively following children on the meds, or a representative sample of them, systematically collecting data, and assessing risks. That is what I understand by "monitoring."

The FDA's idea of monitoring is passive, and ineffective.

AARP caught in insurance marketing scam

2008-11-19T16:27:00.000-05:00

I've never entirely trusted those AARP television ads hawking health insurance. I think the AARP is a worthy group, and I would like to believe that its imprimatur would mean that the health insurance it was selling was legitimate, and perhaps even better than what you might find on the open market.

It turns out my skepticism was warranted. The New York Times reports this morning that the AARP, with partner United Health Group, have suspended sales of the insurance after an inquiry by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (photo) found evidence of deceptive marketing.

More than a million people bought the plans, which claimed to provide comprehensive coverage. Ah, two slippery-er words were never heard: "comprehensive coverage." The plans in many cases pay only a fraction of what a medical procedure typically costs.

AARP, which fancies itself a kind of consumer watchdog with regard to health insurance--it has criticized the "hard-sell" tactics of insurers, the Times says--is caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

The Times adds that the AARP, known as an advocate for senior citizens, is also a business, selling travel services, life and homeowner's insurance, and mutual funds. Operating revenue last year was $1.2 billion.

What explains the opposition to gay marriage?

2008-11-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

Voters in three states--California, Arizona, and Florida--voted to ban gay marriage on Tuesday.

I've never understood the opposition to gay marriage (or gay fatherhood, which is why the subject comes up here).

A couple of years ago in Washington, at dinner with parents who were lobbying Congress for better care and insurance coverage for their mentally ill children, one woman revealed that she was a spokesperson for a group opposed to gay marriage.

It was not a political gathering--it was supposed to be a non-partisan group united in support of mentally ill kids. But it quickly became political.

Allowing gay marriage, the woman said, would undermine the institution of marriage. I asked how. "There are studies," she said. "I can send them to you."

A few months before this gathering, Elizabeth and I had eloped to Key West to get married. Every detail of the ceremony, at Hemingway's house, was perfect, right down to the champagne and key lime pie. I can't imagine, I said at the gathering, how the status of gay marriage could have in any way undermined our marriage. the gay marriage opponent didn't have an answer for that; she just told me she would send me the studies. I told her I was eager to see them, that I wanted to understand her position. I meant it.

When the "studies" arrived, a few weeks later, I was disappointed to see that they were not studies at all. They were anti-gay marriage columns by a conservative columnist in Sweden, as I recall. They merely repeated that gay marriage would undermine marriage; they didn't do anything to help me understand why so many people apparently believe that.

Marriage is an institution only because it is renewed millions of times around the world every year by couples who recreate it for themselves. As long as people continue to get married, the institution will be sound, I think. When they don't, it will crumble.

If we really want the institution of marriage to endure and be strong, should we not extend it to as many people as possible? By discouraging gay couples from marrying, aren't conservatives themselves undermining the institution?

2008-10-31T16:43:00.000-04:00

Surely there must be a better way than this of turning boys into men and fathers. These ads by The Family Place are running on buses in Dallas.

Documentary Indicts State Child-Support Systems

2008-09-24T22:55:00.000-04:00

I saw a screening last Friday of an interesting new documentary charging that the state child-support systems are both dysfunctional and fraudulent. For my review, see http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-fathers/200809/new-documentary-indicts-child-support

Tom Davis now on my blogroll

2008-08-25T12:35:00.000-04:00

Tom Davis is a smart writer about families and mental health. Check out his blog, Coping with Life. In addition to keeping up the blog, he works as a reporter at the Bergen Record in New Jersey. He's been a Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow, and he teaches at Rutgers.

He's a good guy to follow. He should be on your regular blog list, too.

Another Story About Over-Medicated kids

2008-08-22T13:42:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, the Dallas Morning News ran an investigative story about the use of psychiatric drugs in foster children in Texas. My initial reaction to the story, and my considered reaction--after I'd read it closely and thought about it for a few days--were both the same. Here is another story that supplies loads of ammunition to those among us who think we are wildly over-diagnosing and over-medicating our children. As I point out in a detailed critique for the Columbia Journalism Review, most authorities think the opposite is true: Too many sick kids are not getting treatment. See my Columbia Journalism story.

The simplest way I can break it down is this: Set aside the small number of mentally ill kids who were correctly diagnosed and are being treated properly. That leaves two groups of children:

--Those who are being impropertly diagnosed or over-medicated;
--And those who desperately need treatment and are not getting it.

Both of these groups need our help. Sadly, the first gets far more attention than the second.

Psychologists Ban Participation in Torture

2008-08-16T17:39:00.001-04:00

Not strictly about fathers, but fathers were undoubtedly among those Iraqis and others being tortured, a point worth remembering: The American Psychological Association has forbidden its members, or any psychologists, from participating in torture in any way. See my item on Huffingtonpost:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raeburn/americas-psychologists-fi_b_119340.html

Balancing Women's Safety Against Children's and Fathers' Rights

2008-07-23T11:41:00.000-04:00

A New Jersey court ruling on domestic violence has set off a predictable, one-sided debate about protecting women from domestic violence.

In the ruling, a New Jersey Superior Court judge said that it was too easy to get a restraining order against an allegedly abusive husband or father. He said that restraining orders should be granted only when there was “clear and convincing” evidence of a threat.

The issues are a bit complicated. Restraining orders are indeed an important way to keep an abusive husband away from his wife. But when they are issued in error, they also keep a falsely accused father away from his children.

Until now, the standard in New Jersey has been that a “preponderance” of evidence is required for a restraining orders. That’s an easier standard to meet than “clear and convincing” evidence.

Sandy Clark, associate director of the New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women, was troubled by the ruling, arguing that it will women will have a harder time getting restraining orders against abusive husbands. “They are typically the only witnesses to the abuse,” Clark told the Associated Press. “So to have to show [abuse] by clear and convincing standard would be challenging.”

If the ruling stands—it is not yet binding on New Jersey courts—getting a restraining order in New Jersey will be indeed tougher to do.

Jane Hanson, executive director of Partners for Women and Justice in Montclair, N.J., is clear about the implications of that. “As a practical matter, there will be fewer restraining orders issued, so there will be more domestic violence,” she told the Newark Star-Ledger.

She doesn’t actually know that; but it’s a reasonable and plausible argument. I think she’s right. But what she neglects to include is the plausible argument on the other side: If fewer restraining orders are issued, fewer fathers will be unfairly kept away from their children.

I’m not a legal scholar, and I couldn’t possibly say what the legal standard for a restraining order should be. But as this issue is given further attention in the courts, let’s remember that mistakes can be made on both sides.

Too few restraining orders, and more women are harmed. Too many, and more fathers and children are harmed.

Reuters: Bush administration wants to block federal funds to hospitals and states that provide birth control

2008-07-16T12:35:00.000-04:00

Family planning groups object to abortion plan

Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:16pm BST

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Family planning groups and at least one member of Congress objected on Tuesday to a Bush administration memo that defines several widely used contraception methods as abortion and protects the right of medical providers to refuse to offer them.
The proposal would cut off federal funds to hospitals and states that attempt to compel medical providers to offer legal abortion and contraception services to women...

read more

2008-07-15T11:43:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to update notice of my most recent post on About Fathers, for Psychology Today.

The most recent is on the approximation rule--the legal concept that share of child custody after divorce should approximate the time each parent spent with the children before the divorce.
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-fathers/200807/should-child-custody-be-based-pre-divorce-share-caretaking

2008-07-02T11:44:00.000-04:00

During the past 25 years or so, people around the world have become happier.

How do we know? Because researchers at the University of Michigan, led by political scientist Ronald Inglehart, asked them. These were the questions asked in 97 countries:

"Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?" And, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

So: Whom do you think would rank number one? The answer is Denmark. The survey does not explain why Denmark is number one, of course. It just happens that people in Denmark rank themselves higher than anyone else.

Now that you know Denmark is number one, which country would you guess is second?

The survey found that Zimbabwe is the unhappiest of the 97 countries surveyed. No surprise there. Robert Mugabe's campaign of terror, murder, and assassination, as part of his effort to remain in power, must overwhelm anything else happening in the lives of Zimbabwe's people.

Number two, after Denmark, is Puerto Rico, a kind of polar opposite of Denmark. And number three is Colombia, where people say they are happy and satisfied with their lives, despite political turmoil and drug traffic.

Americans rank 16th behind, among others, Canada.

The survey dealt with individuals, not families, but we might guess that families--and fathers--are happier in Denmark, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Canada than they are in the United States.

What can we learn from this? A frostly climate isn't the key to happiness, nor is a tropical one. Wealth may be partly responsible; poorer countries, as a whole, rank lower than wealthy countries. Inglehart says, "The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives."

How would you answer the questions?

2008-06-26T12:11:00.001-04:00

Finally had a chance to closely read the fathers' day cover story by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times Magazine, with the cover language, "Will Dad ever do his share?" After I got past that discouraging headline, I discovered an interesting story about couples who are obsessively trying to split child care right down the middle. I thought in some instances they were taking things a bit too far, but bravo to them for making an attempt to get mothers and fathers equally involved.

I found some odd numbers in the story, however. These figures are apparently supported by surveys and other research, but they seemed implausible to me. In couples in which both mother and father have full-time paying jobs, the wife does 28 hours of housework per week, and the husband 16, on average.

Leaving aside the disparity--which was addressed in the article--that's 44 hours of housework per week, done by parents who are working at least 80 hours per week at their jobs (40 hours each, if not more). Let's continue with the math. That's about 6 1/2 hours of housework per day. When do these couples find time to sleep--or more importantly, take care of their kids?

And now for the childcare numbers. In these same families with two wage earners, mothers spend 11 hours per week caring for children, and dads 3 hours per week. Only 14 hours per week for child care? That seems improbably low, especially for this father of a two-year-old. Only two hours per day, total, both parents combined?

I'll be exploring these numbers further in a future post. For now, I wanted to be clear about the questions I have.

About Fathers

2008-06-24T16:43:00.001-04:00

I've begun a new blog for Psychology Today, called About Fathers. Here's the link:

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-fathers

The most recent post, which I put up June 20th, is about a new study concluding that fathers have an important positive influence on their kids. Engaged fathers have boys with fewer behavior problems, girls with fewer psychological problems, and their children display enhanced cognitive development. The authors of the study also found that research on fathers is dwarfed by research on mothers.

Leave me your comments...

2007-06-14T16:43:00.001-04:00

I'm reposting this from June, 2006:

In March, a nationwide study of depressed mothers found that successful treatment of depression in the mothers often eased or prevented depression in their kids. When the treatment didn’t work, the opposite was true—the kids were more likely to become or remain depressed.

It was an impressive demonstration of the emotional links between mothers and their children. But what about fathers? The depression study, led by Dr. Myrna Weissman of Columbia University, didn’t say. Nobody looked at whether fathers had anything to do with the mental health of the kids. Why?

Mothers were easier to study, the researchers said, because they were usually the ones who brought the kids to the clinic for pediatric care. Besides, fathers aren’t as likely as mothers to get depressed. So they didn’t talk to the fathers.

As a father, I took this personally. I have three grown children, including a son who has suffered from bipolar disorder, and a daughter who has suffered from depression. (The third suffered from something that doesn’t have a name—being the brother of two kids with these illnesses.) I’ve spent countless hours agonizing over whether my fathering made things better or worse for my kids. Weissman and her colleagues didn’t say outright that fathers don’t matter. But by trumpeting the connection between mothers and children--and omitting fathers from the equation--that’s exactly what they implied.

It wouldn’t be so bad if this were the rare study that ignored dads. But the practice of ignoring fathers is widespread in research. In May, for example, another study looked at drug use, psychiatric illness, and violence among mothers of 2,756 children followed from birth until they were three years old. The study’s authors, led by Dr. Robert S. Kahn of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, found that if mothers had problems in those areas, the kids had problems, too. What about the fathers? You won’t find out from this study.

Scientific journals are filled with countless other studies like these. That wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t affect us. But it does. This widespread neglect of the father-child bond among researchers reaches into our collective, popular notion of what it means to be a father. Fathers, the research seems to be saying, aren’t really necessary.