Sunshine Cleaning

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.

Involved dads improve kids' IQs, social mobility

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

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

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.

California octuplets: Another view

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.

Cheerleading Dad

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?

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.