The necessity of both sexes in
parenting
Reconcilable DifferencesWhat Social Sciences Show About the Complementarity of the Sexes & Parentingby
W. Bradford
Wilcox In the last four decades, a feminist
revolution has swept the globe. To be sure, this revolution has brought many
beneficial changes to our world. Now, for instance, much of the world allows
and encourages women to bring their talents into the public spheres of work and
public policy. But this revolution has also brought less welcome developments
to the global scene. What might be described as the androgynous impulse—an
impulse that seeks to deny any essential or biologically based differences
between men and women—is one of those developments. Androgynous Impulse This impulse can be found, among other
places, in the public policies and social agendas of international bodies
associated with the United Nations. The UN committee responsible for
monitoring compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is one example. This committee has called
on countries like Armenia and Belarus to end public policies and practices that
support distinctive maternal roles for women, such as Mother’s Day and maternal
leave policies. Instead, it and other proponents of this type of feminist
agenda would like to see public policies that promote an androgynous parenting
ethic where fathers and mothers devote equal amounts of time to parenting, and
parent with essentially the same style of parent-child interaction. The primary problem with this androgynous
impulse is that it does not recognize the unique talents that men and women
bring to the most fundamental unit of society: the family. A growing body of
social scientific evidence confirms what common sense and many of the world’s
religions tell us: Men and women do indeed bring different gifts to the
parenting enterprise. Consequently, at all levels of social life—the
international, national, and local—public policies, cultural norms, and social
roles should be organized to protect rather than prohibit the complementary
parenting styles that fathers and mothers bring to family life. But before embarking on an overview of
this literature, let me offer two caveats: First, not every mother or every father
will possess all of the distinctive sex-specific gifts described below. For
instance, some fathers are not endowed with a firm temperament suited for
discipline, and some mothers are not endowed with a sensitive temperament
suited for nurturing. Nevertheless, most fathers and mothers possess
sex-specific talents related to parenting, and societies should organize
parenting and work roles to take advantage of the way in which these talents
tend to be distributed in sex-specific ways. Second, although both sexes possess most
of these parenting talents, one sex nevertheless tends to excel in each of
them. For instance, mothers are generally better at nurturing small children
than are fathers, but fathers can also nurture their children. Thus, societies
should build on these comparative sex-specific advantages by letting each sex
take the lead in the domains where it excels. Talented Mothers Among the many distinctive talents that
mothers bring to the parenting enterprise, three stand out: their capacity to
breastfeed, their ability to understand infants and children, and their ability
to offer nurture and comfort to their children. Obviously, only mothers can breastfeed
their children. The medical literature on the advantages of breastfeeding could
not be clearer. Breast milk offers infants a range of sugars, nutrients, and
antibodies unavailable in infant formula. It protects infants against at least
eleven serious maladies, from ear infections to sudden infant death syndrome.
Indeed, this research led the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1997 to
recommend that infants be breastfed until at least one year of age. Here
mothers clearly have a very sex-specific advantage in parenting.1 Mothers also excel in interpreting their
children’s physical and linguistic cues. Mothers are more responsive to the
distinctive cries of infants. They are better able than fathers, for instance,
to distinguish between a cry of hunger and a cry of pain from their baby, and
better than fathers at detecting the emotions of their children by looking at
their faces, postures, and gestures.2 Another study found that
adolescents report that their mothers know them better than their fathers do.3 In sum, mothers are better able than
fathers to read their children’s words, deeds, and appearance to determine their
emotional and physical state. This maternal sensitivity to children helps
explain why mothers are superior when it comes to nurturing the young,
especially infants and toddlers. Because they excel in reading their children,
they are better able to provide their children with what they need—from a snack
to a hug—when they are in some type of distress. Perhaps more importantly, there is
growing biological evidence that mothers are primed by their hormones to engage
in nurturing behavior such as hugging, praising, or cuddling.4 The
hormone peptide oxytocin, which is released in women during pregnancy and
breastfeeding, makes mothers more interested in bonding with children and
engaging in nurturing behavior than fathers. In other words, not only are women
better at nurturing but they also are more likely to enjoy expending time and
energy nurturing children. Children know this. Numerous studies
indicate that infants and toddlers prefer their mothers to their fathers when
they seek solace or relief from hunger, fear, sickness, or some other distress.5
In other words, when children look for comfort and consolation, no one compares
with mom. Thus, it should not surprise us to find
that, as Stanford psychology professor Eleanor Maccoby has observed in The
Two Sexes: “In all known societies, women, whether they are working
outside the home or not, assume most of the day-to-day responsibility for child
care.” Taken together, mothers’ comparative advantage in breastfeeding,
understanding their children, and nurturing makes it functional for societies
to organize the bulk of childrearing around the mother. Talented Fathers Although the distinctive talents that
mothers bring to the childrearing enterprise are invaluable, especially for
infants and toddlers, fathers also bring an array of distinctive talents to the
parenting enterprise. I am not going to focus on the advantages
in physical size and competitive instinct that fathers have when it comes to
providing for and protecting their families.6 Instead, I am going to
focus on three advantages that relate specifically to parenting: specifically,
fathers excel when it comes to discipline, play, and challenging their children
to embrace life’s challenges. Although mothers discipline their
children more often than do fathers simply because they spend more time with
them, fathers do have a comparative advantage in this area. Typically, fathers
engender more fear than mothers in their children because their comparatively
greater physical strength and size, along with the pitch and inflection of
their voice, telegraph toughness to their children. Fathers also are more
assertive than mothers in their dealings with their children, and are less
likely to bend family rules or principles for their children. In a word,
fathers tend to be firmer and more compelling disciplinarians than mothers.7 Consequently, fathers are more likely
than mothers to get their boys to respond appropriately to their disciplinary
strategy, both because of their uniquely firm approach to discipline and because
boys seem more likely to respond to discipline from someone of the same sex.8
For all these reasons, dad’s discipline plays a signal role in fostering an
orderly climate in the home. Fathers also have an advantage when it
comes to play. Although mothers, once again, spend more time playing with their
children than do fathers, the type of play that fathers engage in with their
children is distinctive. Fathers are much more likely to engage their infants,
toddlers, and older children in vigorous, physical, and exciting forms of play
and games.9 Fathers are more likely than mothers to
be found throwing their toddlers in the air, wrestling with their school-age
boys, or kicking a soccer ball with their teenage daughter. This vigorous style
of play is popular among infants and toddlers, who generally prefer to be
picked up by their father rather than their mother (if they are not in
distress).10 As important, paternal play promotes
social skills, intellectual development, and a sense of self-control. The playful
side to fathers teaches their children how to regulate their feelings and
behavior as they interact with others. Engaging in rough physical play with dad
teaches children how to deal with aggressive impulses and physical contact
without losing control of their emotions. For instance, one study found that
father-child play taught children to recognize others’ emotions and to regulate
their own emotions.11 As Emory psychologist John Snarey wrote,
“children who roughhouse with their fathers . . . usually quickly learn that
biting, kicking, and other forms of physical violence are not acceptable.”12
In other words, the lessons children learn playing with their fathers prepare
them well for the game of life. Challenging Fathers Finally, fathers play a central role in
pushing their children to face the challenges and opportunities that confront
them outside the home. Compared to mothers, fathers are more likely to
encourage their children to take up difficult tasks, to seek out novel
experiences, and to endure pain and hardship without yielding. Fathers are more
likely than mothers to encourage toddlers to engage in novel activities, to
interact with strangers, and to be independent; and as children enter
adolescence, fathers are more likely to introduce children to the worlds of
work, sport, and civil society.13 The bottom line is that fathers excel in
teaching their children the virtues of fortitude, temperance, and prudence as
they prepare for life outside their family. Not surprisingly, there is
considerable evidence that paternal involvement is associated with higher rates
of educational and occupational attainment, self-confidence, and more
pro-social behavior for boys and girls.14 Fathers’ strengths in discipline, play,
and challenging behavior are related to their distinctive position in the
family. Because of the smaller role they play in procreation and because they
do not have the same hormonal priming to engage in nurturing behavior as
mothers do, fathers are—to some degree—more distant from their children and,
more generally, from the daily emotional dynamics of family life than are
mothers. Although this distance can be a liability if fathers are neglectful of
their parenting responsibilities, it can be an asset if fathers take advantage
of this distance to engage their children in a distinctly fatherly way. By this I mean that fathers, because of
their distance from their children, feel freer to be firm and challenging with
their children than do mothers. In general, this distance also makes fathers more
likely to focus on their children’s future and to take the difficult
steps—e.g., telling a son to stop fooling around in school and shape up—that
ensure that their children reach their potential and internalize a sense of
self-control. Rutgers sociologist David Popenoe
summarizes the complementary strengths of mothers and fathers well in his Life
Without Father: The complementarity of male and female
parenting styles is striking and of enormous importance to a child’s overall
development. . . . [F]athers express more concern for the child’s long-term
development, while mothers focus on the child’s immediate well-being (which, of
course, in its own way has everything to do with a child’s long-term
well-being.) . . . [T]he disciplinary approach of fathers tends to be “firm”
while that of mothers tends to be “responsive.” While mothers provide an
important flexibility and sympathy in their discipline, fathers provide
ultimate predictability and consistency. Both dimensions are critical for an
efficient, balanced, and humane childrearing regime.15 Necessary Differences Research on parenting styles and family
structure indicates that sex-differentiated parenting helps children in
important ways. A review of research on parenting in Child Development
found that children of parents who engaged in sex-typical behavior where the
mother was more responsive/nurturing and the father was more challenging/firm
were more “competent” than children whose parents did not engage in sex-typical
behavior. Another study of adolescents found that the best parenting approach
was one in which parents were highly responsive and highly demanding
of their children.16 The research on family structure is also
very suggestive. In general, children who grow up in an intact, married family
are about 50 percent less likely to experience serious psychological, academic,
or social problems as children or young adults, compared to children who grow
up in single or stepfamilies.17 The general tenor of this research can
be illustrated by briefly considering what we know about how fatherlessness
affects boys and girls. For boys, the link between crime and
fatherlessness is very clear. As former US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
observed in The Moynihan Report: “A community that allows a large
number of young men (and women) to grow up in broken families, dominated by
women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, . . . that
community asks for, and gets, chaos.” Boys learn self-control, as we have
heard, from playing with and being disciplined by a loving father. As
importantly, boys also learn to control their own aggressive instincts when
they see a man they respect and love—their father—handling frustration,
conflict, and difficulty without resorting to violence. By contrast, boys who
do not regularly experience the love, discipline, and modeling of a good father
are more likely to engage in what is called “compensatory masculinity,” where
they reject and denigrate all that is feminine and instead seek to prove their
masculinity by engaging in domineering and violent behavior.18 Studies of crime indicate that one of the
strongest predictors of crime is fatherless families. Princeton University
sociologist Sara McLanahan found in one study that boys raised outside of an
intact nuclear family were more than twice as likely as other boys to end up in
prison, even controlling for a range of social and economic factors.19
Another review of the literature on delinquency and crime found that criminals
come from broken homes at a disproportionate rate: 70 percent of juveniles in
state reform schools, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 60 percent of
rapists grew up in fatherless homes.20 Studies of crime and family patterns at
the neighborhood level come to similar conclusions. As Harvard sociologist
Robert Sampson observes, “Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the
strongest, predictor of variations of urban violence across cities in the
United States.”21 Civilized Daughters Clearly, fathers play a central role in
civilizing boys. They also play an important role in civilizing girls, as the
research on sexual promiscuity and teenage childbearing makes readily apparent. Fathers who are affectionate and firm
with their daughters, who love and respect their wives, and who simply stick
around can play a crucial role in minimizing the likelihood that their
daughters will be sexually active prior to marriage. The affection that fathers
bestow on their daughters makes those daughters less likely to seek attention
from young men and to get involved sexually with members of the opposite sex.
Fathers also protect their daughters from premarital sexual activity by setting
clear disciplinary limits for their daughters, monitoring their whereabouts,
and by signaling to young men that sexual activity will not be tolerated.22 Finally, when they are in the home,
research by University of Arizona psychology professor Bruce Ellis suggests
that fathers send a biological signal through their pheromones—special aromatic
chemical compounds released from men’s and women’s bodies—that slows the sexual
development of their daughters; this, in turn, makes daughters less interested
in sexual activity and less likely to be seen as sexual objects.23 Consequently, girls who grow up in intact
families are much less likely to experience puberty at an early age, to be
sexually active before marriage, and to get pregnant before marriage.24
Indeed, the longer fathers stick around, the less likely girls are to be
sexually active prior to marriage. One study found that about 35 percent of
girls in the United States whose fathers left before age 6 became pregnant as
teenagers, that 10 percent of girls in the United States whose fathers left
them between the ages of 6 and 18 became pregnant as teenagers, and that only 5
percent of girls whose fathers stayed with them throughout childhood became
pregnant.25 Sexed Gifts I could also present studies indicating
that mothers play a unique role in fostering the welfare of children. But
because fatherlessness is the bigger problem confronting the world today, I
think these studies on fathers are sufficient to indicate the importance of
promoting a parenting ethic that embraces rather than rejects the distinct
gifts that the sexes bring to the parenting enterprise. Vive la difference. Let me now conclude our review of the
social scientific literature on sex and parenting by spelling out what should
be obvious to all. The best psychological, sociological, and biological
research to date now suggests that—on average—men and women bring different
gifts to the parenting enterprise, that children benefit from having parents
with distinct parenting styles, and that family breakdown poses a serious
threat to children and to the societies in which they live. Consequently, governments and international
organizations such as the United Nations need to come to terms with the
accumulating social scientific evidence that indicates that distinctly gendered
approaches to parenting are best for children and families. They have to
recognize that most societies will and should organize their approach to
parenting along gender-complementarian lines, both because this is what comes
naturally to most men and women and because this is what is generally best for
children. This recognition should be matched by public policies and social
norms at the international and national levels that support mothers and fathers
who seek to parent in sex-typical ways, without penalizing mothers and fathers
who depart from the typical patterns. Of course, many influential feminist
organizations and other groups will resist such a strategy. They will point to
academic work that claims sex differences are just a consequence of
socialization patterns in societies that are organized along sexist lines. But
such resistance will look increasingly futile in the face of growing scientific
evidence that men and women are generally different, especially when it comes
to the parenting enterprise. Even Eleanor Maccoby, a distinguished
feminist psychologist who once championed the idea that sex differences were
caused only by socialization, is now acknowledging the importance of biology in
explaining sex differences in parenting. In her latest book, The Two Sexes,
she concludes her study of men and women by admitting that it is probably not realistic to set a
fifty-fifty division of labor between fathers and mothers in the day-to-day
care of children as the most desirable pattern toward which we should strive as
a social goal. We should consider the alternative view: that equity between the
sexes does not have to mean exact equality in the sense of the two sexes having
exactly the same life-styles and exactly the same allocation of time.26 It is my sincere hope that this
alternative view—that gender equity does not require an androgynous parenting
ethic—will come to guide the public policies and social norms that shape family
life around the globe, for the sake of the children. Notes: 1. Steven E. Rhoads, Taking Sex
Differences Seriously (Encounter Books, 2004), p. 217; http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;100/6/1035. 2. Eleanor E. Maccoby, The Two Sexes (Harvard
University Press, 1998), p. 268; Ross D. Parke. Fatherhood (Harvard
University Press, 1996), p. 49; Rhoads, pp. 204 and 221. 3. Maccoby, p. 272. 4. Maccoby, p. 260; Rhoads, pp. 198–199. 5. Parke, p. 122. 6. Jeffrey Rosenberg and W. Bradford
Wilcox, writing in the US Department of Health and Human Services’ “Child Abuse
and Neglect User Manual Series,” 2005. 7. Wade Horn and Tom Sylvester, Father
Facts (National Fatherhood Initiative, 2002), p. 153; David Popenoe, Life
Without Father (Free Press, 1996), p. 145; Thomas G. Powers et al.,
“Compliance and Self-Assertion,” in Developmental Psychology 30
(1994); Kyle Pruett, Fatherneed (Broadway Books, 2000), pp. 32–33. 8. Powers, pp. 980–989. 9. Popenoe, pp. 143–144. 10. Pruett, p. 28; Michael Lamb,
“Infant-Father Attachments and Their Impact on Child Development” in Handbook
of Father Involvement (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002). 11. Parke, p. 138. 12. John Snarey, quoted in Popenoe, p.
144. 13. Pruett, pp. 30–31; Popenoe, pp.
144–145. 14. J. Mosley and E. Thompson, “Fathering
Behavior and Child Outcomes” in Fatherhood (Sage). 15. Popenoe, pp. 145–146. 16. Both studies Popenoe, p. 146. 17. Paul Amato and Alan Booth, A
Generation at Risk (Harvard University Press, 1997); Sara McLanahan and
Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (Harvard University
Press, 1994). 18. Popenoe, pp. 154 and 157. 19. Cynthia Harper and Sara McLanahan,
“Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,” forthcoming in Journal of
Research on Adolescence. 20. Eric Brenner, Fathers in Prison
(National Center on Fathers and Families, 1999). 21. Robert Sampson, “Unemployment and
Imbalanced Sex Ratios” in The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans
(Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), p. 249. See also Catherine Cubbin et al.,
“Social Context and Geographic Patterns of Homicide among U.S. Black and White
Males” in American Journal of Public Health 90 (2000); Michael R.
Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, A General Theory of Crime (Stanford
University Press, 1990). 22. Both studies Carol W. Metzler et al.,
“The Social Context for Risky Sexual Behavior Among Adolescents,” Journal
of Behavioral Medicine 17 (1994); Popenoe, pp. 158–160. 23. Bruce Ellis et al., “Does Father
Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage
Pregnancy?” in Child Development 74; Bruce Ellis, “Of Fathers and
Pheromones,” in Just Living Together (Lawrence Erlbaum). 24. W. Bradford Wilcox, forthcoming. 25. Ellis et al. 26. Maccoby, p. 314 W. Bradford Wilcox is an assistant professor of sociology
at the University of Virginia and the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How
Christianity |