HEALTH & WELLNESS Fathers and sons
MICHAEL BIZZARRO, PHD, LCSW
beliefs about parenting.
I would like to recognize all of the fathers and sons who struggle in their relationships with each other, as well as the courage they display in facing the numerous challenges in their life.
With dual-income families, fathers are more involved as co-parents than ever before.
The other side of the equation is that children spend more time in daycare and experience less parental care. The most stunning change in the American family over the past generation is neither marital nor economic; rather, it is how men and women have modified their expectations and
Fathers in early childhood development
It is not uncommon for children to be raised in a single-parent household – 69 percent of children are. And since only 4 percent of single-parent households are headed by dads, most of these kids spend the majority of their time with their mothers. There is considerable evidence that children( boys and girls) yearn for a close and intimate relationship with their father. In fact, as children develop, particularly from ages three to six, they form identity through identification with the same-sex parent.
For boys in particular, the impact of an absent father can be a disruption of the physical, emotional and psychological development, resulting in stages that are not quite mastered. Cumulatively, these unmastered stages create additional challenges. For instance, an example of successful age mastery finds that school-aged children with active, nurturing and committed fathers are generally much more successful in their academic, athletic and social pursuits and have higher self-esteem than those who have less father involvement.
Indeed, effective fathering increases a child’ s chance of developing a positive body image, self-esteem, moral strength and intellectual and social competence.
What makes a good father?
Since we want all of these things for our children, how do we know what“ effective fathering” is?
The single most powerful predictor of a father’ s engagement with his children is the quality of the man’ s relationships with the child’ s mother, regardless of whether the couple is married, divorced, separated or never married. How often have you heard or even experienced the horrors surrounding divorce, whereby children often become the pawns of revenge and are the casualties of this misdirected hurt and anger?
What happens to the children who yearn for their father when
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