family

The Important Parenting Differences Between Moms and Dads

We know that mothers and fathers are fundamentally different when it to comes to creating children. Everyone knows that no one exists without a major contribution from a mother and a father. The difference in moms and dads is essential to successful procreation.

It’s an interesting contradiction that many people believe the difference in mom and dad ends there. They honestly believe there is no real meaningful difference between men and women when it comes to parenting. This is what is behind the simplistic and relativistic claim “Love makes a family!”

This assumption is contrary to an overwhelming body of careful medical, psychological and social science research on the importance of mothers and fathers to healthy child development.

Yale University’s Kyle D. Pruett is one of the leading scholars doing foundational work on mother/father differences in parenting. Writing in the medical journal Pediatrics in 1998, Professor Pruett explains that children, from earliest ages, can distinguish between whether it is their mother or father interacting with them and are drawn to either’s unique nature depending on their needs.

Babies aged seven to 13 months tend to respond more excitedly to being held by their fathers because father-love is simply more stimulating, thrilling and unpredictable.

Mother-love tends to be more predictable and soothing. This is essential for children’s development. Moms hold their babies for caregiving and comfort, while fathers are far more likely to pick up their children for play, using more verbal, facial, and physical stimulation.

Pruett explains the obvious difference, “Fathers’ typically larger size, deeper voice, courser skin, smell, physical attributes, and habits all combine to offer a distinctively different buffet of potential attachment behaviors.”

In more recent research, a systematic review of 31 separate research investigations on mom/dad parenting styles from over 15 countries around the globe, reports,

Our findings reveal that mothers as compared to fathers are perceived as more accepting, responsive, and supportive, as well as more behaviorally controlling, demanding, and autonomy granting than fathers…

This research also found that mothers and fathers were different in how they directed the behavior of their children, with mothers being more relational and fathers being more rule-based.

“These findings accord with the notion that in the context of child-rearing in the family, mothers play a more nurturing role while fathers play a more protective role.”

Dr. Natasha Cabrera, professor of human development at the University of Maryland, explains, “The research that I have been doing for the last twenty years now … what we observe is that fathers make a unique contribution to children’s development, which means it is not the same as moms’.”

She adds, “Moms, we do our thing, and dads do their thing and both things are super important for children’s development.”

Comfort, Confidence and Care

A major difference in what fathers and mothers bring to the lives of their children is the building of comfort and confidence, two essential qualities of healthy human development.

Fathers supply an indirect, but very real, sense of comfort by building confidence in their children. They do this in their unique orientation to the child. Mothers are generally more child-focused.

Fathers are different. They tend to have a world-child focus. Mothers are interested in protecting their child from the world. Fathers are more likely to introduce their child to the opportunities and challenges of the world. This prepares children for the world.

Therefore, father’s more expectant and broader interaction with the child has a very positive impact on a child’s ability to self-regulate in various challenging situation. This builds a sense of essential security that is distinct from how mom provides caring comfort.

Just consider how moms and dads are different in the importance of play.

Child’s Play is Serious Business

Erik Erikson, a pioneering child-development theorist, says that play for the child is the development of a sense of industry. They are imitating the adult world of work and accomplishment. This is essential to healthy development. While mother helps children play in the home at various tasks, it is father who helps his child really explore the larger outside world.

Think of a parent encouraging his child to climb higher in a tree or on playground equipment.

Run faster, jump higher or further, take risks. Is that likely to be mom or dad? We all know it’s dad. This encouragement builds confidence, physical skills and self-regulation. Dad helps the child take safe risks that often provide exciting payoffs. The challenging experience is usually followed by a congratulatory, hugely confidence-building “You did it!”

Both father and child are thrilled, while mother wonders why risk was necessary in the first place. It is very necessary.

Father-play is also more likely to develop large-motor-skills in their children, while mother-play operates more in fine-motor-skills. Think jumping, climbing, rolling, running and diving versus cutting, coloring, dressing, tying, eating and finger-play.

Throwing Babies

Think about babies being thrown in the air. It happens all over the world. We know a few things about this phenomenon. Babies are scared to death going up, but giggly excited when they land back in secure hands. This experience demonstrates the world can be scary, but it can also be exciting. That is why a child almost always yells “again!” after the experience.

The second thing we know is it is seldom mother who throws babies. Dads, uncles and grandfathers do this. And they are building confidence by introducing their children to controlled risk-taking experiences that result in exciting payoffs. This is an essential quality in secure, successful human beings.  

Language

Moms and dads are also different when it comes to language development.

One of the first things we do in relationship is we speak. We use words to connect. Nearly every new parent does two things at the arrival of their child, and these continue throughout that child’s life. They hold their new baby and speak to them. At birth, this is a profound moment. What parent doesn’t immediately look into their child’s opening eyes and naturally say, “Hello little one!” or “Welcome to the world ” and call out their name?

Professor Cabrera tells us, “One key example [of mother/father difference] is in language development.”

Back in the day, we would think that fathers talk to the children as adults, and that that’s bad. But in fact, what we find is that fathers talking to their children use complex and diverse words. That linguistic input is very important for children’s language development because fathers tend to be more linguistically challenging to their children than moms.

This is supported by other scholars who have studied the difference in mother/father communication with their children. Fathers tend to be more direct with their children in their requests, but are also more likely to ask compound questions, introducing many concepts for the child to consider. They don’t speak down to the level of the child as much. This builds confidence, critical thinking skills and a vocabulary lesson. This is why children who are well fathered tend to show up to school with richer linguistic skills.

Conclusion

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that mothers and fathers are essentially the same or optional for the family. They are not. Dr. Pruett, later in his career, explained in his book Partnership Parenting: How Men and Women Parent Differently,

… [R]esearch has shown just how important involved men are to raising healthy children, increasing the chance that they will be healthier emotionally and socially, strong cognitively and academically, and stable throughout their lifetime.

This is why he states, “Fathers are not substitute mothers.”

Kids need both mother and father to be created, but also to grow into healthy, productive human beings and citizens.

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Marriage and the Public Good: A New Manifesto of Policy Proposals

A New Agenda for Tech and Family

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, “Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”  

The wily cat replies, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”  

Alice than says, “Well, as long as I get somewhere.”  

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” the cat replies, “as long as you walk far enough.” 

The inseparable and essential relationship between the destination and the journey should be obvious, but it often isn’t. This is especially true of technology, which is progressing at a dizzying pace and taking us all along for the ride, often without a clear idea of where we’re going or why. 

From artificial intelligence to assisted reproduction to social media to automation to assisted suicide, new developments in technology are transforming how we live, love, communicate, procreate, and die. Few who are leading this technology seem willing or able to explain our destination. Is the purpose efficiency? Maximizing utility and pleasure? Making tech billionaires richer? With technology so pervasive and powerful, it’s essential to ask, like the cat, where society should go before deciding where it will go.  

A new project to explore how technological progress should serve human flourishing has united a stellar group of conservative leaders. A Future for the Family is asking where technology should take us. In a statement of principles that was just published in First Things, these leaders state: 

A new era of technological change is upon us. It threatens to supplant the human person and make the family functionally and biologically unnecessary. But this anti-human outcome is not inevitable. Conservatives must welcome dynamic innovation, but they should oppose the deployment of technologies that undermine human goods.  

The statement gives numerous examples. For instance, medical interventions in the form of IVF and surrogacy bypass the body in reproduction, turn vulnerable women into wombs-for-rent and commodify the smallest lives, often fatally. Technological efforts to control life and death have led to a slippery slope of euthanasia and assisted suicide on one hand, and a transhumanist quest for immortality on the other. Ever-expanding access to pornography and “digital prostitution” has turned sex into a product that propels addiction, predates on children, and corrupts essential relationships. And unchecked algorithms of social media have rewired children’s brains and hijacked their most vulnerable stages of development in the name of profit.  

In short, our technologies promise human connection and productivity while in actuality isolating users and placing us all under constant surveillance. This so-called “progress” has left life more disembodied, removing image bearers from the natural world, and making physical community and human contact an afterthought.  

The consequences have been especially terrible for the family, which is the institution most essential for human flourishing. Our technologies promise to redefine, renegotiate, and even redesign this fundamental aspect of how God made the world, but cannot deliver. “The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child,” G.K. Chesterton wrote, “cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.” 

Nothing could be more foolish than to place the future of families in the hands of tech companies whose sole motives are profit and efficiency. Good policy guidance, beginning at the federal level, is needed. This “Future for the Family” statement proposes ten sound principles to direct our technological journey. 

The list of signatories and organizations behind “A Future for the Family” is impressive to say the least. Together, these experts in policy, social science, family, and theology offer what has long been missing in the rush toward technological “progress.” This is a project Christians can celebrate, join, and support.  

Image from Shutterstock.

New Report Gives Update on Family Formation and Child Well-Being

In a new report, State of the Nation, 14 university-based and think tank scholars provide a look into how the United States is in relation to other leading countries around the world.

This study comes from a mix of conservative, moderate, and liberal contributors. The report examines 37 measures across 15 different categories. Topics like children & families, citizenship & democracy, mental health, life satisfaction, physical health, education and attitudes of trust in various social institutions.

The Daily Citizen will examine their measures on children and families.

In terms of family formation, they only look at children living in single-parent families. This is an important measure of child and societal well-being, but it is only one among others like marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation.

This report correctly admits that “growing up in a single-parent household is associated with a wide range of negative consequences during adolescence, including lower academic achievement, higher dropout rates, increased aggression in school, fewer social connections, risky behaviors (e.g., drug use), and a higher chance of teen pregnancy.”

They add, “When they become adults, these children tend to have lower incomes, higher rates of anxiety and depression, difficulty engaging in their own stable relationships (e.g., they have higher divorce rates), and increased rates of incarceration.”

This is a categorical denunciation of the “Love Makes a Family” propaganda of family-redefinition advocates. Married families where children are raised and loved by their own mother and father produce the strongest results in healthy child development.

This report finds that the rate of children living with a single parent has essentially remained stable overall from 1990 to the present, with numerous up and down rises and dips as shown here.

These scholars “saw rising rates of single-parent childhood in the 1990s” which “stayed at this level until the mid-2010s.” They continue, “This has been followed by a decline of three percentage points that offset the initial rise. For that reason, we now stand at almost exactly the same level as 1990.”

This report claims that the three countries in their global survey that have higher rates of single-parent families than the U.S. are Lithuania, Belgium, and France. This conflicts with a 2019 Pew Research Center report which states that out of 130 countries and territories, “The U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.”

This seeming conflict could be because of the three – percentage point decline this current report mentions, which might not have been reflected in Pew’s data. But Pew did examine the years 2010 through 2018.

This report also found that child mortality has been improving in the United States. Globally, child mortality has been almost halved since 1990. These scholars assert the “recent decline in US child mortality is almost entirely due to a decline in motor vehicle accident deaths.” They note, “The decline in mortality is also happening despite the rise in low birth weight, which increases child mortality.”

Low birth weight babies have been increasing slightly since the 1990s in the United States. Yet, it is still at a low level. These scholars offer an explanation for the increase:

Some of the rise in low birth weight is driven by the rising age at which women are having children. Also, the rising use of assisted reproduction (e.g., in vitro fertilization, IVF) leads to a greater prevalence of multi-child births where each baby generally has a lower birth weight.

They also state that mother’s obesity, malnutrition, sexually transmitted diseases, stress and substance abuse can contribute to low birth weights.

These scholars also report that youth depression is worsening. They state, “The US ranks second-to-last in the world of 112 higher-income countries – just behind Greece, Spain, and Portugal – and we have been falling further and further behind.”

Other sources have been reporting the same alarming youth depression trend. In April 2022, The Atlantic featured a major piece documenting increasing feelings of persistent sadness and depression among America’s youth. They show the trends this way.

Note that so-called “LGBT” youth have the highest levels of sadness and hopelessness. This trendline is sharply increasing at the very time our nation, and the rest of the developed world, is telling such children they have everything to celebrate in being sexually and gender divergent.

This State of the Nation report correctly recognizes that “the time that parents and other family members spend with their children shape children’s values, knowledge, skills, habits, beliefs, and emotional well-being.”

They conclude, “In the long run, no country can be more successful than its children.”

Related Articles and Resources

Mapping Declining US Marriage Rates

Mapping US Fertility and Married Parenting Rates

Mapping US Divorce Rates

Mapping US Unmarried Cohabitation Rates

Important New Book Explains Why Marriage Still Matters

Family Scholars Explain the Current Marriage Paradox in America

New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever

Why Marriage Really Matters – 3 Focus on the Family Reports

Research Update: The Compelling Health Benefits of MarriageCohabitation Still Harmful – Even as Stigma Disappears

J.D. and Usha Vance Parent on National Stage

Yesterday, newly-inaugurated Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha, gracefully faced what many parents might understandably consider a DEFCON-1, red-alert situation:

Wrangling three young, tired children at a prestigious, nationally televised event while sitting next to the President of the United States.

I’m not a parent, and I’m pretty sure even I’ve had that nightmare.

The young family arrived at the National Parade yesterday dressed to the nines, with Vance carrying three-year-old Mirabel and Usha preventing 7- and 4-year-old Ewan and Vivek from tumbling headfirst down the Capital One Arena steps.

The couple spent the next half an hour or more holding, blocking, sitting with and shuffling their children around their seats. There was bouncing, standing on chairs, lolling in uncontrolled boredom, and, of course, conversations with President Trump. Thumbs were sucked. Teddy bears were almost dropped into the parade.

You can watch some of the hilarity here:

There’s something refreshing about prominent parents being unashamed about being, well, a family.

Children are undeniable, joyful blessings. They are also frequently inconvenient. They can be messy, hyper, stubborn and fussy. They get tired easily. They don’t tend to enjoy sitting down for long periods of time.

The Vances included their children in a life-changing event when many might have deemed them too inconvenient to bring along. In doing so, J.D. and Usha demonstrated that they consider themselves, first and foremost, parents.

Parenting, at its core, is a constant, selfless pursuit. It requires parents to deprioritize their own interests — and sometimes, sanity — in favor of caring for and guiding the little blessings they’ve been trusted with.

And there are no days off.

The constancy of parenting has been minimized in American culture. Too many new parents feel like it’s too much to ask. Restless kids are plopped in front of screens so parents can “take a break.” Teaching kids how to behave is increasingly farmed out to schools and daycares, which some argue should be free.

The Vances clearly do not subscribe to this view. They didn’t take time off from parenting to make their own experience less stressful. Perhaps they understand that celebrating and spending time with their children is more rewarding than looking perfect for the cameras.

That’s a powerful illustration of godly parenting and familial commitment — one I hope many families will find affirming and uplifting.

Son Discovers Birth Mom After Years of Friendship

Vamarr Hunter visited his local bakery every week for more than ten years before discovering a lifechanging secret — the owner he had come to know and love was none other than his biological mom.

“You can’t tell this story without thanking God,” Hunter told The Today Show’s Laura Jarett, “because I was just led the entire way.”

The father of four spent 13 years searching for his birth mom before seeking a genealogist’s help in 2022.

That’s how Lenore Lindsey, the founder of Give Me Some Sugah, ended up with his number.

South Chicagoans flock to Give Me Some Sugah for comfort, community and baked goods. Lindsey looks out for regulars like Hunter, and the two formed a friendship over his favorites — lemon bars and pancakes.

But when Lindsey received her long-lost son’s phone number, she didn’t know Hunter was on the other end. The 67-year-old spent most of her life remembering the baby she gave up for adoption with a lingering sense of shame.

“Every time I think about how I disappointed my parents, that’s just very overwhelming for me,” she confessed about her teenage pregnancy. “All I could think about [when I got pregnant] was how I could make this better for my parents and just kind of go on.”

When Lindsey summoned the nerve to dial the number on the bakery’s phone, Hunter answered: “Ms. Lenore? I didn’t order anything.”

The conversation that followed involved “a lot of screaming,” the two recalled, sitting side-by-side. “A lot of, ‘Oh, my God!’”

In hindsight, Lindsey says, she sees how much they are alike. When he first visited her bakery, she remembered noticing how much Hunter’s laugh sounded like her brother’s.

The sweet story could have ended. But, As Psalm 23 tells us, God often blesses us with more than we need, filling our cups to overflowing.

When Hunter and Lindsey learned about their connection, Lindsey was recovering from breast cancer surgery. Soon after, she had a stroke and could no longer keep up with the store.

So, Hunter spent nights learning to bake. When Lindsey deemed him proficient, he quit his job to run the store full time. Now, the two run the shop side by side.

“I couldn’t just sell it to anybody or have anybody coming in,” Lindsey reflected. “They had to feel it. They had to feel the people. [Hunter] loves it like I love it. That’s huge for me.”

She jokes that it doesn’t hurt Hunter’s cakes are better than hers.

Hunter says God has used his experience to open people’s hearts to Him.

People that I don’t necessarily imagine were very spiritual before, they have been coming [and saying] ‘Man, that’s God.’” Hunter told Jarret. “They have an awakening of their own faith.”

While Hunter and Lindsey shared their story with Today Show cameras, careful viewers might notice the open Bible on a stand in the shop’s corner. Underneath stands a plaque emblazoned with Numbers 6:24-26 (KJV) — a perfect description of the generous way God redeemed this once painful situation.

The Lord bless and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Amen.