Fathers: The invisible parent

Sex Roles, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1980

Fathers: The Invisible Parent

Alan Booth University o f Nebraska

John N. Edwards Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Viewing the family as a system of interdependent roles has frequently led to the assumption that fathers, in comparison with mothers, play highly restricted roles vis-gt-vis their children. Much of the literature on fathers, in point of fact, stresses their absence, their disinterest, and lack of competence in child care. Reported here are~findings from a sample of 231 families which suggest that this conception o f fatherhood does an injustice to the empirical case. The evidence indicates that when the amount of time available to spend with children is considered, the father's involvement with his children is equal to that of the mother's. Under certain conditions, in fact, father-child involvement exceeds the child-related activities performed by mothers.

Family theorists typically have portrayed the Western family as a system of specialized role sets. Perhaps best known is Parsons ' characterization (1955) suggesting a bifurcation along an instrumental-expressive axis, the husband-father playing more instrumental roles while the wife-mother assumes those more expressive in nature. As these roles pertain to parenthood, fathers are suggested to be more concerned with matters external to the family group and mothers are asserted to be internally oriented. As Parsons (1955) put it:

In our opinion the fundamenta l explanation of the allocation of the roles between the biological sexes lies in the fact that the bearing and early nursing of children establish a strong presumptive primacy of the relation of mother to the small child and this in turn establishes a presumption that the man, who is exempted f rom these biological functions, should specialize in the alternative iflstrumental direction. (p. 23)

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446 Booth and Edwards

So pervasive has such theorizing been that it is not coincidental when i

Margaret Mead notes that "fathers are a biological necessity, but a social accident" or when the observation is made that fathers have replaced the American Indian as the forgotten man (LeMasters, 1970).

Our traditional views of fathers and their parental role can be succinctly summarized: fathers are uninterested in children, are less nurturant, prefer non-caretaking roles vis-fl-vis their children, are less com- petent in caring for their offspring, and they spend as little time with them as possible so as to not let the offspring interfere with the external obliga- tions that fathers must fulfill. We contend, as far as parenting is concerned, that these views effectively relegate fathers to the closet or, as some might suggest, to the marital bed. Primordial as it may seem, much of our theory on paternal parenting indicates a strong urge to impregnate but little impetus for fathers to assume a broader role in the care and socialization of their children.

Frequently this notion is reinforced by reference to select ethological literature and that concerning the effects of hormones (Parke & Sawin, 1976). Among many of the advanced animal societies, those of primates in particular, much of the child care is carried out by mothers and the com- munity as a whole. So widespread is this pattern that, according to some ob- servers, true paternal care is difficult to distinguish (Wilson, 1975, pp. 349-352). Some experiments have suggested a hormonal basis for this behavior. Injecting virgin females with estrogen has been found to "p r im e" female rats for caretaking activities related to infant survival (Rosenblatt, 1969). Whether any of this evidence has relevance for human parental roles, at this stage in the development of the research, remains undemonstrated. Perhaps some genetic or hormonal base is sufficient for activating parental behavior, but it certainly is not a necessary condition (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974).

Accumulating evidence on fathers clearly points out that fatherhood among humans has to be viewed in something other than a biological sense and is a larger and more complex role than previously thought (Benson, 1968; Lamb, 1976; National Council on Family Relations, October 1976). While past research on fathers emphasized their neglect of offspring or their absence (cf. Biller, 1971), a growing number of studies stress the broad range of activities in which they take part and the influence fathers exercise in the family setting (Price-Bonham, 1976). Aldous (1975), for example, has noted that fathers stimulate among their children more original solutions to problems than do mothers. Other recent investigations point up the extensive interest fathers have in their children (Parke, O'Leary, & West, 1972), the equally nurturant behavior displayed by both fathers and mothers (Parke & O'Leary, 1976), and the rather high degree of involve-

The Invisible Parent 447

ment fathers have in child care, although it remains generally less than that of mothers (Biller & Meredith, 1975). In fact, most contemporary research suggests there is considerable plasticity in parental behavior that extant theory does not enable us to understand (for excellent summaries of this research, see Lamb, 1976; Mussen, 1973).

This evidence notwithstanding, the actual degree of involvement of fathers with their children is an aspect of fatherhood that has been virtually ignored. The purpose of the present study is t o rectify this in part by com- paring fathers' and mothers ' relationships with their offspring. To do so, five variables concerning various aspects of parent-child relations were in- corporated into the study: the parents ' attitudes toward praising their children, the number of times they threaten to strike the offspring, the actual frequency with which mothers and fathers did hit their children, the amount of time each parent played with the offspring, and how much time in general was spent in the presence of the children. We, in addition, explored whether differences in parent-child relations were affected by the sex structure of the family, the number of children present, 'and the authority structure of the marital dyad.

D A T A A N D M E T H O D S

Sample

The data for this study came from a stratified probability sample of Toronto families. Thirteen census tracts selected for the study represented a variety of neighborhood conditions ranging from high-rise buildings to single-family dwelling units; all the households in the tracts were enumer- ated and screened. Although the study tracts excluded outlying suburban areas, a comparison of our sample with 1971 census data shows our sample to be quite representative of Toronto households. What minor discrepan- cies were found, we believe, do not limit the general applicability of the findings to urban families.

The population sampled was comprised of intact, white families of European or North American descent with one or more children. The female partner was under 45 years of age, and the families had been residing in their present dwelling unit for a period of at least 3 months. Husbands and wives were administered a 2-hour field interview. Complete infor- mation on the father and mother of 231 families or 462 parents was obtained. Parents were interviewed separately, usually in succession. A systematic comparison of the characteristics of those who consented to be


interviewed with those who did not, revealed that the two groups were similar with respect to occupational status, age of the head of the household, and length of residence in their present dwelling unit.

Independent Variable

The sex of the parent is the independent variable used to compare fathers and mothers. In the analysis, mothers were coded 1 and fathers as 2.

Dependent Variables

Five dependent variables were used to assess the involvement parents have with their offspring: one having to do with an attitudinal dimension and four which concerned behavioral factors. The attitudinal dimension consisted of whether or not the parent agreed with the following item: "The best way for a parent to get a child to do what you want is to praise h i m . " An agree response was coded 1, disagree as zero. Two of the behavioral indicators of the parent-child relationship consisted of asking the parent: "Dur ing the past weeks how many times did you threaten to hit or slap one of your children?" and "During the past weeks how many times did you hit or slap one of your children?" We do not suggest that the use of physical aggression is necessarily or always indicative of a poor relationship. Rather, the items reflect the extent to which the parent is involved in disciplining his or her children. The fact they use physical punishment rather than praise or the withholding of privilege is not pertinent. We are aware, however, that in some cases the use of physical force reflects abuse; such abuse, for which we have medical evidence in this study, constitutes an insignificant number of cases in the present analysis. ~

From a time budget for the weekday preceding the interview, the length of time parents spent playing with their children or taking them places was obtained. As the total number of hours reported was small, the index was coded as a dichotomy so that whether or not a parent spent time in child play was indicated. For the fifth dependent variable, the time budget was again utilized. The total amount of t ime the parent spent in the same room with the child was calculated. While much of the time might have been spent in activities irrelevant to the quality of parent-child ties, no

~Part of the original investigation involved a physical examination in which children were checked for bruises. There was very little relation between the response to the above items and bruises detected to stem from child abuse. Thus, we have confidence that the use of physical force reflected in the above items does not reflect abusive aggression.


doubt some of the time was spent talking with the child, caring for it, and in other ways taking the offspring into account, thus indicating some degree of involvement with the child. This item, as a result, serves as an indirect indicator of the informal aspects of the parent-child relation which the other items could not assess.

Control Variables

The pr imary control variable in the analysis is the amount of time the parent has available to interact with the child. Two i tems were used tO measure this feature of family interaction. First, f rom the time budget the total number of hours the parent was home and awake was taken. The second item consisted of whether the parent worked an evening shift which would take him or her out of the home when the children were most available for play, that is, after school in the af ternoon or in the early evening.

Other variables that were controlled because they are sometimes related to child-rearing practices and activities were: occupational status; years of education; the age of the parent2; country of origin; marital tension, as measured by whether either member of the pair had threatened to leave the other during the 2-year period preceeding the interview; and psychiatric impairment , assessed by the Langner (1962) 22-item index of psychophysiological disorder.

The effect of parental gender on the extent of involvement in parent- child relations was assessed through multiple regression. To segregate the variance that parental sex uniquely contributes to the quaiity of parent-child relations, the control variables were entered into the equation first. Parental gender was entered as a second step. The zero-order correlation between the independent, dependent, and control variables along with their means and standard deviations are shown in Table I.

F I N D I N G S

Inspection of the zero-order correlations suggests that mothers domi- nate child-parent relations. The belief in the importance of using praise, threatening to and actually striking offspring, playing with the child, and spending time in the same room with offspring are all negatively related to sex. With mothers coded as 1 and fathers as 2, the negative coefficients are

2Parent age would also reflect the age of the children, thus influencing whether a parent would play with a child or threaten to strike him.


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an indication that the mothers are more active in the rearing of their children.

However, without taking into account the amount of time each parent has available to interact with the child, the comparison is unfair. In Table II the standardized regression coefficients are shown for sex after removing the effect of the amount of time the father is absent f rom the household and other factors which might influence the parent-child relation. The weak negative relations between sex of parent and the belief in the importance of praising children remains the same, - . 0 4 . Yet, other resulting correlations drop markedly and in one case, playing with the child, becomes positive. The correlation between gender and times threatened to strike children changed f rom - . 18 to - . 0 5 ; between gender and actually striking children f rom - . 14 to - . 0 1 ; between gender and playing with children f rom - . 0 3 to .09; and between gender and time spent with children f rom - . 4 3 to - . 0 3 . Not only is the change substantial but the standardized regression coefficients are so small as to be negligible. In each case the amount of variance explained by parental gender is less than 1%. From these coefficients, it would appear that father-child involvement is as extensive as that between mother and child, given the amount of time fathers have available to spend with the child.

It might be argued that the fact fathers are away f rom home so much is because they are not interested in relating to their children, that they stay away f rom home to avoid contact with their children. The number of hours fathers spent at home does not support this argument. Fathers spent an average of 6.1 waking hours per day at home, a substantial number. Futhermore, when fathers and mothers who are employed full- time are compared, the difference in the amount of time spent at home is nominal: fathers were home 5.1 waking hours while mothers were home an average of 6.4 hours.

We were interested in learning the extent to which our basic finding of no difference between fathers and mothers was altered by the sex of the children, the number of children, and the structure of the marital relation (that is, whether the marital dyad was basically equalitarian, male dominated, or female dominated). To do this, we reran the regressions for parents that: (a) had only male children; (b) had only female children; (c) had one or two children; (d) had three or more children; (e) reported an equalitarian marital relation; (f) indicated a female-dominated relation; and (g) reported a male-dominated relation. 3 The betas showing the relation

~Dyadic structure was obtained from the fathers' and mothers' response to the item: "When there is disagreement, who usually gets his own way?" When either parent reported "spouse and myself equally" the dyad was coded as equalitarian. When either parent reported husband mostly or always, the marriage was coded male dominated; and when either parent reported wife mostly or always, the pair was coded as female dominated.

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between the sex of the parent and child relation variables, controlling for the variables mentioned previously, are shown in Table III .

When the children are male, the mothers tend to threaten to strike them more often (beta = - .26) and spend more time in the same room with them than the father (beta = - . 19). The father, on the other hand, is more likely than the mother to believe in the utility of praise in disciplining the children and to play with them as well (beta = . 10). When the children are female, the mother is more likely to follow through on threats (beta = - . 1 7 ) and actually strike the children more than their fathers (beta = -.21). Fathers tend to be more active playmates with their female children than are mothers (beta = .16). It appears, though, that mothers are more involved than fathers in physically disciplining their children when they are of one sex; all four betas are negative. It is of further interest that mothers are more apt to strike female children (beta -- - . 2 1 ) than male children (beta -- - .01). Equally noteworthy, parents spend more time with opposite sex children when all of the offspring are of one sex; the beta for male children is - . 19 and for female offspring, .09. 4

The number of children appears to have less effect than the sex of the children. The most striking difference in parent-child relations is that fathers tend to play with their offspring when there is only one or two (beta = .29), but when the number of children exceeds that number, mothers are more likely to play with their youngsters (beta = - . 1 8 ) . Perhaps fathers begin to abdicate their role when the child-parent relation becomes compli- cated by a large number of children. Since they are not socialized to play with children when they are young, they may not have the experience to cope with larger numbers of children.

With one exception, the effect of marital structure on the underlying finding of this study is negligible. The exception is the tendency for fathers more than mothers to play with their children in female-dominated marriages. To a lesser degree, this is also the case with male-dominated marriages (beta = .21). In equalitarian dyads, on the other hand, mothers and fathers are equally likely to play with the offspring.

One final matter considered in this study is the effect of the parents on each other. Whether the availability of one spouse affected the involvement of the other in the parent-child relation was examined. I f one parent is at home for a limited period, does the other parent spend more time with the children in order to compensate for the absent member , or does the parent

"It is, of course, possible that our results with respect to child gender are due to only-child family status. Many single-sex child households may also be one-child households. To ex- plore this possibility, we made up a d u m m y variable where all single-child households were coded 1 and the remainder 0, and entered it into the regression equations along with the other controls. The results were not appreciably different f rom those reported. Therefore, we can reject only-child family status as a confounding factor in our child gender analysis.


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withdraw f rom the offspring for reasons of sensory overload? The regressions were rerun adding the variable of spouse's time at home and spouse's work shift. It made no difference in the magnitude or direction of the coefficients relating parental gender and the quality of parent-child relations. The coefficients were within a point or two of those shown in Table II. Neither did we find that the amount of variance explained by parental gender was altered in any way.

SUMMARY AND C O N C L U S I O N

As Alice Rossi (1968) remarked several years ago:

Parenthood will continue for some time to impose a degree of temporary segregation of primary responsibilities between husband and wife, but, when this takes place in the context of a previously established egalitarian relationship between the husband and wife, such role segregation may become blurred, with greater re- cognition of the wife's need for autonomy and the husband's role in the routines at home and child rearing. (p. 31)

Apparent ly such role segregation has become blurred, for it is clear f rom our findings that fathers do play a vital role in rearing their young. When the amount of time they have available to spend with their children is taken into account, the involvement of the father with his children is equal to that of the mother ' s . In point of fact, father-child involvement exceeds mother- child involvement under certain conditions. This is particularly the case when the offspring are all female, number fewer than three, and when the marital dyad- -con t ra ry to Rossi 's content ion-- is dominated by one parent.

While the number of measures of parent-child relations used in this study is limited, and thus indicate a need for a more comprehensive assess- ment, the evidence presented here is strongly suggestive that the time has come to remove fathers f rom the closet of family research. Coupled with the growing incidence of single-parent fa therhood and the continuing evolu- tion of marital roles, fathers can no longer be relegated to the backstage of the family scene. I f the conceptualization of the nuclear family as a complex of interdependent roles is to be of continuing utility, it must be altered in such a way as to reflect the complexity of actual family constellations.

Such an alteration, at the minimum, would entail the abandonment of any simplistic assumptions that parental roles are closely linked to biological functions. The presumption that these biological exigencies necessarily lead to a sharp and clear-cut differentiation into instrumental and expressive roles simply cannot be maintained in light of the empirical case. The data presented here plainly suggest that fathers do not always, or even most of the time, "specialize in the alternative instrumental direc- t ion . " As Walters and Stinnett (1971) concluded in their review of a decade

456 The Invisible Parent

of parent-child research, "nearly every generalization concerning parent- child relationships must be qualified by a list of contingent conditions" (p. 101). If our findings are representative, this would seem to be no less the case when our concern is with the role of fathers.

REFERENCES

Aldous, J. The search for alternatives: Parental behavior and children's original problem solutions. Journal o f Marriage and the Family, 1975, 3 7, 711-722.

Benson, L. Fatherhood: A sociologicalperspective. New York: Random House, 1968. Biller, H. Father, child, and sex role: Paternal determinants o f personality development.

Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1971. Biller, H. B., & Meredith, D. L. Father power. New York: David McKay, 1975. Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). The role o f the father in chiM development. New York: Wiley, 1976. Langner, T. A 22-item screening score of psychiatric symptoms indicating impairment.

Journal o f Health and Human Behavior, 1962, 2, 269-276. LeMasters, E. E. Parents in modern America. Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1970. Lynn, D. B. The father: His role in child development. Monterey: Brooks/Cole, 1974. Maccoby, E. E., & Jacklin, C. N. The psychology o f sex differences. Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1974. Mussen, P. H. The psychological development o f the child. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1975. National Council on Family Relations. Special issue: The Family Coordinator, 1976, 25,

335-512. Parke, R. D., & O'Leary, S. E. Father-mother-infant interaction in the newborn period: Some

findings, some observations and some unresolved issues. In K. Riegel & J. Meacham (Eds.), The developing individual in a changing world (Vol. 2). The Hague: Mouton, 1976.

Parke, R. D., O'Leary, S. E., & West, S. Mother-father-newborn interaction: Effects of maternal medication, labor and sex of infant. Proceedings o f the 80th Annual Con- vention o f the American Psychological Association, 1972, 7, 85-86.

Parke, R. D., & Sawin, D. B. The father's role in infancy: A re-evaluation. The Family Coordinator, 1976, 25, 365-371.

Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. Family, socialization and interaction process. Glencoe: Free Press, 1955.

Price-Bonham, S. Bibliography of literature related to roles of fathers. The Family Co- ordinator, 1976, 25, 489-512.

Rosenblatt, J. S. The development of maternal responsiveness in the rat. American Journal o f Orthopsychiatry, 1969, 39, 36-56.

Rossi, A. S. Transition to parenthood. Journal o f Marriage and the Family, 1968, 30, 26-39.

Waiters, J., & Stinnett, N. Parent-child relationships: A decade review of research. Journal o f Marriage and the Family, 1971,33, 70-111.

Wilson, E. O. Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1975.

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Fathers: The invisible parent