Family Futures

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Fathers and work-family policies

Professor Margaret O’Brien, Director, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London

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athers’ active participation in family life will likely

be one of the most important social developments of

the twenty-first century. Social scientists argue that

today’s children wish for a relationship with their daddy

not only as an authority figure or ‘father of duty’, but

also as a human ‘loving father’. In many places across the

world fathers are expected to be accessible and nurturing

as well as economically supportive to their children. Caring

father images are now part of everyday culture through

advertising and depictions of sporting icons. In 1975 the

preeminent fatherhood scholar Michael Lamb lamented

that fathers were the “forgotten contributors to child devel-

opment.” Thirty-five years later in

The Role of the Father in

Child Development,

he declared: “How do fathers influence

children’s development?: let me count the ways.”

Over recent decades, the issue of fathers in families has devel-

oped an increasingly global focus in research, practice and

policy. In 2010 the first international conference on fatherhood

in Asia took place; in 2011 the first United Nations Report on

Men in Families and Family Policy in a Changing World was

published; and in 2013 advocacy for active fatherhood became

global with the emergence of the global fatherhood campaign,

MenCare, across 25 countries on five continents.

But who are fathers and what do they typically do in the

families and communities in which they live? Research has

heightened our knowledge about the diversity of fathers as

individuals, the variety of ways men engage in fathering (their

behaviours) and the nature of fatherhood itself as a set of social

and cultural norms. Even within the same kin group, fathers

may behave differently to their children depending on a child’s

gender or a father’s age and cohort position. Just as mothers’ rela-

tionships with their children vary, so too do fathers’ and, as the

research evidence accumulates, it shows that fathers are critical

to children’s well-being. Children benefit and are at risk from the

life histories both fathers and mothers bring to their parenting.

Engaged and caring men are important in the lives of

women and children, and being engaged in family life in turn

benefits men’s health and well-being. Results from longitu-

dinal research show that children who have involved fathers

have fewer behavioural problems, fewer conflicts with the law,

less subsequent financial vulnerability, better cognitive devel-

opment and school performance, and overall feel less stress

during adulthood. Conversely, evidence points to the adverse

impact on children of dysfunctional or violent fathers.

An important distinction is between biological/genetic fathers

and ‘social fathers’, who are not biologically connected to the chil-

dren they live with and support. Social fathers may be step-fathers

– one of the fastest growing categories of fathers in high-income

countries – or kin members such as uncles or grandfathers who

take on paternal responsibilities when biological fathers are absent

through lone motherhood, separation or migration.

The increase in divorce and re-partnering towards the end

of the last century has been a key demographic change shaping

Image: The Fatherhood Institute

Image: The Institute of Education

Children are now more likely than in previous generations to experience more than one father figure throughout their life course