The Important Parenting Differences Between Moms and Dads

by Glenn T. Stanton | February 13, 2025 | Culture

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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