Why Men Have Become More Involved Through The Lives Of Children

Demographically, over 90% of the participants strongly agreed that fatherhood is crucial in our society. A little over 47% of fathers, that encouragement from the mothers of their children matters because of the obstacles they faced with finance, and their duties on the job. The final results of marital status statistics is over 80% married fathers, nine percent divorced, and six percent never married. One surprising statistic was 90% cohabitate with the mother and focal child (Glenn & Popenoe, 2006).

The differences between gender roles are not so apparent anymore. Men are not always the typical breadwinners and many women are not stay-at-home mothers. An article by Beaupré, Dryburgh, and Wendy (2010) described the transition that many men are going through. According to Beaupré, et al., (2010), fathers were once considered the forgotten parent. “Until recently studies on the family focused mainly on the mothers” (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fortunately, both parents are now being focused on. Fathers today are much more involved in the pregnancy and birth of their child and their child’s life in general (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Beaupré, et al., (2010) explained that women’s involvement in the labour force could be a factor to this change. Women are more educated than they were in previous years. And while women want to work more, men want to be more involved in their children’s lives (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fatherhood is occurring later in adulthood. Research stated that the majority of men are very satisfied with their involvement in their children’s lives. (Beaupré, et al., 2010).

It is vital to recognise the long-term value fathers uptake of parental leave brings to children’s wellbeing, reduced gender stereotyping, family economic stability and women’s employment prospects. Researchers Duvander and Jans (2009) found a decrease in gender stereotypes within the family and an increased involvement with children, which last as the child ages. The research revealed that the longer the length of leave taken by fathers, including where parents had separated, the greater amount of contact fathers had with their children as well as the greater amount of time they spent on household chores compared to fathers who took little to no leave (Duvander & Jans, 2009; Hass & Hwang, 2008; Ray, Gornick & Schmitt, 2010). Research has shown the important impact of fostering a relationship between both a child’s mother and father has shown a positive long term for a childs cognitive development and social and emotional wellbeing (Cabrera, Tamis-Lemonda, Bradley, Hofferth & Lamb, 2005; Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid & Bremberg.

Fathers today spend more time taking care of their children compared to previous generations. Even with these gains, today's mothers devote almost double the time that fathers do for child care.[2] While every situation is different, in most families there

Some scholars have argued the notion that fathers are important contributors to their children and adolescents’ psychosocial development (Mandara, Murray, & Joyner, 2005). According to Allgood, Beckert, and Peterson (2012), researchers are beginning to understand the importance of examining children’s perspectives and the relationships and levels of involvement children have with their fathers.

Throughout this entire I have learned so much about men, and the variety of behaviors they possess in different social contexts. Out of all the ideas I learned I found one extremely important and interesting, father-child relationship. Specifically, the differences between a traditional and an involved dad. I always knew that not every parenting style was the same among fathers, and how some were more involved than others. I never thought there was a category of these two types of fathers. After breaking down each category, a lot of it made so much sense. The most important thing between the two was the emphasis on how the traditional dad tends to deflect the responsibility of parenting, while the involved dad has a committed

here's no question that fathers do play an important role in their children's lives. A father's presence and involvement can be as crucial to a child's development as is a mother's. Fathers also play role in to child's relationship with other and the way they behave. In Wil Haygood's essay "Underground Dads", he writes on this topic. His essay helps readers to understand that father or father figure are necessary for a children.

In light of Willmott and Young’s inaccuracy she conducted her own research on 40 housewives between the ages of 20 and 30, and found some evidence of husbands helping around the home, but no evidence of a symmetry trend, being that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework and only 25% participated in a high level of childcare. Also from her research she found that industrialisation lead to the segregation of family roles around the home. Mary Boulton also suggests that many surveys done exaggerate how much childcare is actually done by husbands. Her argument is that while men may ‘help’ with childcare, it is the wives who take main responsibility for looking after the children, often resulting in them having to restrict their own lives. A patriarchal ideology still sees women’s work to be looking after the children and doing housework.

As women continue to struggle for equality in today's society, there is an ever growing notion born out of patriarchal ideology, that a mother has the sole responsibility of caring for and nurturing her children. In the somewhat jocular but pragmatic story “Bad Mother” by Ayelet Waldman (2010) she points to the imbalance between societal expectations of mothers and fathers when she comments:

The survey found that it was still very rare for fathers to take primary responsibility for childcare in dual-earner families, no-earner families or families where only the woman worked, showing again inequality in conjugal roles. Therefore Ferri and Smiths findings disagree with the statement, showing inequality in conjugal roles. Many women agree with Ferri and Smith that it is they rather than their

Brott reads many books while making inferences about society’s views on father figures, then supporting them with evidence from what he has read in the children stories. Modern day books show fathers as not being involved in their children’s lives as much as mothers or aren’t part of it at all, and showing a stereotypical father as a negative figure instead. He continues to state that mothers are seen by society as more caring, understanding and nurturing than men. Brott makes it clear in the third paragraph of his essay, the difference between a caregiver and a nurturer. Caregivers are people who take care of the children while a nurturer not only takes care of children, but also educates, influences, support, and shape the children’s development, and characteristics.

In this essay I will be talking about how feminist have contributed to our understanding of family roles and relationships. There are several different types of feminist theory, but all of them share certain characteristics in common; there is a fundamental division in society between men and women, that women are to some extent exploited by men and that society is male dominant or patriarchal this means “rule by the father” but is used by feminist to indicate that men have more power than women and the interest of men largely shapes how society is run. They believe that these theories are also critical of existing sociology arguing that it has a pro male bias. They call male-dominated sociology malestream sociology calming that most

In addition, in the traditional families the mother usually bore the sole responsibility of the child caring. Modern parents now share this responsibility together because of social and work constraints. However, holidays which are not common in the traditional family, allow them to spend quality time with their children. Moreover in many modern families the father becomes a house worker, to provide for the needs of his children. As the statistics shown in the United Kingdom in 2001, 155 000 fathers were stay home husbands. All in all, the emphasis on nurturing children can be seen in traditional and modern families, alike.

The central arguments in Furstenberg’s reading (1988) include the gradual adaption that men created from the early 1900s to today’s modern culture. In Sara McLanahan’s reading (2004), there is an endorsement that certain variables whether it be a mothers’ age, employment, single motherhood and/or father involvement may affect a child’s life/childhood. Both similarly have a peroration in discovering what exactly benefits a child or children in a family, or rather what benefits a family in general. Findings in these readings were results reflecting women extending from the domestic sphere and into the workforce and an extension of the role of the father beyond the workforce.

We can see that fathers and children support each other, reassure each other and depending on the age of the children, they could also act as breadwinners as their father tries to get back into the family structure and prepares to assume his role of providing for his family.