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The Myth of the Biologically Unfit
Father
Margaret Mead once said that fathers are a
biological necessity, but a social accident. And
throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries our culture has been trying very hard to
make this view a reality. Socialized into being the
family breadwinner, "traditional" fathers provided
a strong moral and material support for their
families, meted out discipline for their children,
but did little else. They paced the waiting room
during childbirth, rarely, if ever, changed a
diaper or warmed a bottle, and generally steered
clear of the nursery, leaving the responsibility
for child rearing almost entirely to their
wives.
The view of fathers as "accidental" was shared
by those who studied parenthood and child
development. Sigmund Freud, for example, who had a
major influence in shaping the 20th century's
cultural views of parenting, believed that since
mothers usually fed and cared for babies, they were
biologically better suited to be parents and they
would exert more influence over their children than
fathers would.
But there were some challenges. One of the
fiercest critics of Freud's focus on feeding as the
centerpiece of early development was John Bowlby, a
British psychiatrist. "The conventional wisdom was
that infants were only interested in mothers
because mothers fed them," reflected Bowlby in a
1977 interview. "I was profoundly unimpressed by
that."
Rather than consider the importance of fathers,
Bowlby continued to promote the idea that mothers
were superior—but for slightly different
reasons. For Bowlby, any emotional and social
problems suffered by children resulted from the
lack of an "attachment bond, the process by which
the infant comes to prefer specific
adults—specifically his mother—over
others. Bowlby suggested that attachment is a
result of instinctive responses important for the
protection and survival of the species. Crying,
smiling, sucking, clinging, and following all
elicit necessary maternal care and protection for
the infant and promote contact between mother and
infant. He stressed that the mother is the first
and most important object of infant attachment,
relegating fathers to the role of mother's little
helper.
The notion of mothers' biological superiority
and, correspondingly, fathers' inferiority got a
big boost in the 1950's from primate researcher
Harry Harlow. In his now famous experiments, Harlow
showed that rhesus monkeys would develop an
attachment to a surrogate caregiver. Or, to use
Harlow's non-neutral term, surrogate "mother." To
prove this he constructed two stand-ins; one, a
wire mesh mother and a cloth-covered mother.
Although the wire-mesh mother provided the food,
Harlow found that the monkeys spent most of their
time—sixteen to eighteen hours a day clinging
to the cloth mother.
What this experiment proved was that attachment
(in monkeys, at least) was based more on the
"contact comfort" provided by the terry cloth
covering than on the chance to feed. Fathers could
have easily provided this kind of warmth and
comfort, even if the couldn't nurse their
offspring. Nevertheless, Harlow persisted in
labeling these experimental caregivers as mothers,
a label that promoted the myth of the biologically
primacy of mothers.
There's no question that throughout history,
fathers have taken on less of the care and feeding
of infants and young children than mothers. It
would be a mistake, however, to conclude that this
is true because mothers have some sort of
biologically based nurturing or care taking
superiority. If so, one might expect fathers to
play a relatively minor role in childcare in all
cultures. But this is not the case.
Fathers in a number of other cultures share
infant and childcare more or less equally with
their wives. And in our own culture, many, many men
are actively involved in nurturing their children
and there are thousands more who, as stay-at-home
fathers, do nearly all of the childcare. And, as
Kyle Pruett, a Yale psychiatrist and author of The
Nurturing Father has documented, these primary
caretaker fathers do an excellent job. Clearly, the
family roles played by mothers and fathers are not
biologically fixed. Instead, they vary with a
variety of social, ideological, and other
conditions.
©2007, Armin Brott
* * *
It's clear that most American children suffer
too much mother and too little father. - Gloria
Steinem
A
nationally recognized parenting expert, Armin Brott
is the author of Blueprint
for Men's Health: A guide to a health
lifestyle,
The
Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for
Dads-to-Be;
The
New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First
Year, A
Dad's Guide to the Toddler
Years, Throwaway
Dads, The
Single Father: A Dad's Guide to Parenting without a
Partner and Father for
Life. He has written on parenting and fatherhood
for the New York Times Magazine, The
Washington Post, Newsweek and dozens of
other periodicals. He also hosts “Positive
Parenting”, a nationally distributed, weekly
talk show, and lives with his family in Oakland,
California. Visit Armin at www.mrdad.com
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