family

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,

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.

Related Articles and Resources

Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being

Family Scholars Explain the Current Marriage Paradox in America

New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever

Important New Book Explains Why Marriage Still Matters

Why Marriage Really Matters – 3 Focus on the Family Reports

Reclaiming the Truth About Marriage

Research Update: The Compelling Health Benefits of Marriage

Brad Wilcox Exhorts Young People to ‘Get Married’

New Research: Marriage Still Provides Major Happiness Premium

Cohabitation Still Harmful – Even as Stigma Disappears

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Women

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men.

Yes, Married Mothers Really Are Happier Than Unmarried and Childless Women

Married Mothers and Fathers Are Happiest According to Gold-Standard General Social Survey

Married Fatherhood Makes Men Better

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

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.