Consider this article, Mothers Nurture, Fathers Lovingly Control written by Wade Horn:
All is not well with America's daughters. One in five girls younger than 18 lives in poverty; for preschoolers, the figure is one in four. Reports of child sexual abuse have more than tripled since 1976--with girls the most common victim. Forty percent of all females become pregnant at least once as teenagers.
Half of all teenagers will carry their pregnancies to term, and when they do, 72 percent will give birth out-of-wedlock. The startling fact is that on most measures of child well-being, our nation's daughters are worse off today than they were just three decades ago.
What is going on that so many girls are experiencing so many difficulties and what can we do about it? The answer to both questions is one and the same: fathers.
In 1960, only about 17 percent of children were growing up in a home in which their father did not live. Today, that figure has more than doubled to nearly 40 percent. That means that 12 million girls are currently growing up without their father.
It is well recognized that when fathers are absent, boys are at significantly higher risk for developing conduct problems--they act out aggressively and sometimes quite violently toward others. Less well-recognized is that girls too are placed at-risk when fathers are absent. In fact, girls who grow up without fathers underachieve at school, engage in early and promiscuous sexual activity, and have a less secure gender identity.
Why should fathers make such a difference in the lives of girls? The answer to this question lies in the fact that mothers and fathers tend to parent differently. Beginning at the birth of a child, mothers tend to be more verbal with their children, whereas fathers are more physical.
Mothers also tend to encourage personal safety and caution, whereas fathers are more challenging of achievement, independence, and risk-taking. And mothers tend to be more powerful nurturant figures and fathers stronger disciplinarians.
These differences in parenting styles translate into improved child well-being for several reasons. First, research has consistently demonstrated that families socialize children best when they use a combination of nurturance and control. In fact, children reared in such households are found to be friendly, energetic and well-behaved. Given that mothers tend toward nurturance and fathers toward control, children reared in two-parent households are likely to experience this combination.
In contrast, children in father-absent households are likely to experience high levels of parental nurturance, but lower levels of control. High nurturance and low control has been found to be associated with children who have difficulty in self-regulation. For boys this can translate into aggressive acting-out, whereas for girls it frequently results in sexual acting-out.
Second, the "rough and tumble" play of fathers is critical to the success of children for it gives children practice in regulating their own emotions and recognizing the emotional cues of others. And, for reasons that are less intuitively obvious, girls who experience the rough and tumble play of a father, compared to those that do not, have been found to have higher quantitative and verbal skills, better problem-solving abilities, and higher academic achievement levels.
Third, fathers are important to the development of a secure gender identity and appropriate sexuality. While it is intuitively obvious that a boy's interactions with his father teach him what it means to be a man, father involvement is also correlated with secure gender identity in girls.
In fact, the quality of a daughter's relationship with her father is actually a better predictor of a daughter's comfort with her own femininity than is the quality of her relationship with her mother. While the daughter may learn the specifics of the female role from observing her mother, the degree of security and comfort the daughter has in her own femininity is predicted by whether or not her father was nurturing of her when she was young.
Furthermore, if a girl experiences the love of a father who places her well-being above his own and who acts as a natural protector, then the girl is likely to delay sexual relations until she finds such a man herself. If she is denied such fatherly love, then the girl is likely to try to seek it elsewhere--often inappropriately, and often at very young ages.
Our nation's daughters are in trouble, and their troubles are growing worse. The available evidence suggests that improving the well-being of girls depends upon us finding ways to bring fathers back into the home. To do so, we will have to deepen our cultural understanding of the importance of fathers to the well-being of children, restore marriage as the valued and respected institution within which to rear children, and reduce the incidence of divorce.
This post was taken from : Mothers Nurture, Fathers Lovingly Control, Written By: Wade F. Horn Published In: Article Publication Date: September 1, 1996 Publisher: Headway
2 comments:
I appreciate this post. I will have to email you why but I appreicate this post.
Hi dear woman. . . I have read your email....thanks for your comment and sharing your heart with me.....it's a tough place to be in....but not an impossible one...
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