Andrew Law knew he was going to be an involved father when his wife gave birth to twins five years ago. He embraced his role with gusto, taking care of the babies during the day while his wife worked, joining a San Francisco Dads Meetup group and even leading a new dads circle in his capacity as a family therapist. “Modern fatherhood is so much more than making a paycheck and kissing your kids goodnight,” he said.
Now that his kids are in school, he drops them off and picks them up before heading to work in the evenings, but he said that his wife is the one who participates in the volunteer programs there, which are carried out by mostly mothers. In his family’s case, his absence is a matter of logistics — he can’t participate because of his late work hours. But even for families in which both parents could participate, Law has noticed it’s almost always working and stay-at-home mothers who show up for PTA meetings, organize school fundraisers and volunteer in the classroom. Despite his active role in his family and his efforts to organize and support fathers, Law feels like there’s a lingering and unreasonable expectation that a mother is still going to do it all. “How do we encourage dads to be more a part of school life when everything in the world of early childhood is geared toward mothers?” he asked.
Yet the benefits of father participation are clear.
John Badalament, author of “The Modern Dad’s Dilemma,” cites multiple studies going back decades that confirm when fathers are consistently involved in their children’s education, those kids do better academically and behaviorally.
“Children with a mother and a father who are actively engaged at home and school develop stronger cognitive and motor skills, are better problem-solvers and demonstrate more confidence, curiosity and empathy,” he said.
Badalament also directs the Fatherhood Project with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, a program that works with Boston schools to help them include fathers in school culture, and educates parents about the positive impact involved fathers have on their children. “What we’ve noticed in terms of why dads don’t get more involved in school life is simply that nobody asked them,” he said. “There’s a cultural default that assumes mothers will be the more engaged parent.”
The cultural default may originate from the traditional American family structure, in which women stayed home to take care of the children while men went to work and were expected to have a hands-off approach to fathering.
Even though parenting norms have changed, policy still dictates more involvement from mothers because there is little sponsored paternity leave in the United States.
From the very beginning, mothers are in charge of the daily tasks that support the babies, and fathers are back at work. This sets the family on the path toward increasing the mother’s involvement in the child’s activities, and decreasing the father’s. Tackling this challenge requires confronting a long unacknowledged bias: family institutions are not father-friendly.
“Forces are operating against father involvement,” said Philip Cowan, a psychology professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a leading researcher on fatherhood involvement. Cowan and his wife Carolyn Pape Cowan, a retired Berkeley psychology professor, have conducted multiple longitudinal studies on parental involvement in children’s lives and uncovered many of the ways in which institutions are biased toward maternal participation. “These days, you see dads taking care of kids everywhere and we know that modern fathers tend to be quite actively involved with their kids, and yet there are all these gaps in institutions,” Cowan said.
GGetting fathers more involved in schools and other family organizations requires institutions to send a clear message that they are welcome and valued, the Cowans found. They noted that many schools and family social service agencies exclude fathers in myriad ways: posters and waiting-room magazines are tailored to women, and only include images of mothers and kids; color schemes tend toward pink and pastel; men are rarely employed on staff; oftentimes, fathers are treated in a less welcoming way by school employees and agency representatives; changing tables for babies are located only in women’s bathrooms; and meetings are held during business hours, when a majority of fathers can’t attend.
Given these implied biases, fathers get the message they aren’t needed or wanted. Without a direct invitation to participate, most men will choose to opt out, and mothers fill in. “But you change this mindset by making a deliberate effort to reach out to, and connect with, men,” Carolyn Cowan said.
Adding to the problem is the fact that fathers were excluded from most of the research on child development until a few decades ago. The role of fathers has drastically changed in the past 30 to 40 years, when women slowly began to enter the workforce in greater numbers. Today, only around 25 percent of married couples raising children say the father is the family’s sole earner, according to research from the Pew Center. In 1970, that was the case with almost half of couples. Yet many organizations haven’t recalibrated.
“When these institutions were set up, we assumed that fathers were working and mothers were caring for children. But now we have thousands of studies about how father participation is so important to kids’ development. It’s not the amount of time they spend with them, necessarily. It’s more about the quality of their relationship with the child, which affects emotional, social and cognitive development,” said Carolyn Cowan.
TThe Alameda County Father Corps is putting this research into action. Established in 2013, the ACFC is a joint effort of First 5 Alameda County , the Alameda County Public Health Department and the Alameda County Social Services Agency, which all serve the populations of Oakland and Berkeley, California. The corps was founded by a group of male social service employees to address issues of bias faced by fathers. The ACFC annually trains teams of male mentors to work with fathers employed by county social service organizations. Corps graduates report that the program has increased their knowledge of child development, supports them in their work with clients who are fathers of young kids and helps them connect more meaningfully to other male employees at social service agencies.
A hallmark achievement has been to help Alameda county adopt a set of father-friendly principles designed to both encourage men to become fully involved with raising their children, and to support agencies and organizations to better help fathers in this mission.
The principles encourage staff to invite, include and represent fathers in all programming and visual materials, and to make every effort to hire male staff members for jobs that deal with parents.
Kevin Bremond, who works for First 5 California, a state children’s health and education program, leads the initiative. “We’re changing the narrative around fatherhood, and emphasizing the critical role that Dad plays, and the effects of his involvement,” he said. “Everything gets better when Dad is constructively involved. Almost every dad we talk to wants to be better than his dad, and they all want to be there for their child.”
He said that service providers in county agencies aren’t accustomed to thinking about how to teach fathers to be more involved in their children’s lives, but once the providers are educated, change comes quickly. “They start doing their outreach differently, and ask dads to recruit other dads. They start looking to hire male providers to fill vacant positions in county offices such as child support, education, health care, head start and social services. They make a point to ask dads for their contact info in addition to the mother’s, and they set the expectation that fathers should and will participate in their children’s lives,” he said.
While the Father Corps currently works only with families that are clients of social service agencies, they plan to bring their father-friendly principles to schools, libraries, healthcare facilities and other organizations in the next year.
Damon Jones is a single father of three kids who lives in Oakland and works for Alameda County Social Services Agency. He says his participation in the ACFC program gave him the confidence to advocate for himself, and become a more involved parent.
“When I became a single father, I found out how difficult it was to maneuver through the bureaucratic systems to support my kids,” he said. Jones said the need to change the bias of institutions to be more supportive of fathers is long overdue.
The Alameda Father Corps appears to be at the vanguard of the movement to deliberately ensure that fathers are more involved, though many other counties across the U.S. are looking into adopting similar programs, and the national Parent Teacher Association has run a program since 2008 to urge fathers to be more involved in school life. The PTA offers a “Male Engagement Toolkit” on its website, and has widely publicized its tips, which include recruiting fathers, publicizing male contributions, keeping meetings short — which the PTA says works best with men — and holding male-focused school fundraising events with sports, barbecues and golf. A PTA spokesperson said that when a school follows these suggestions, it can generally expect to double men’s participation.
It’s also important that mothers are not the ones to encourage men to be more involved. “Being the only dad at a parent event can be intimidating,” said Philip Cowan. “Fathers generally prefer to be with other men, to be invited by another man.” When women push men to participate, the effect can often be counterproductive. This is due to the gatekeeping effect many mothers inadvertently set up, Cowan said. “Women will say: ‘I want you to be more involved’ and then dad does it and she wants it done a different way and can’t relinquish control.” The experience becomes a negative one, which can discourage fathers from caring for their children and participating in their activities. Yet when fathers are directly recruited, participate together and receive positive feedback from their kids about it, they stay involved.
Watch DOGS (Dads of Great Students) is an organization that has capitalized on this particular set of factors. Their father-involvement program in thousands of public schools across 38 states encourages fathers to be involved during their child’s school day. Fathers are invited to visit the school to help kids and monitor lunchrooms, acting as a positive presence. Ninety-six percent of men who participated said the experience was rewarding.
The Montgomery, Ala., public school system sponsors a similar program called “Raised by the Power of 10 Men,” that brings fathers of schoolchildren and other men in the community into elementary and middle schools at pivotal times during the school year to boost morale. The men line every hallway as the kids enter, cheering and high-fiving students, sometimes playing instruments or singing encouraging songs.
“Being able to have these men come in and show their support in our schools helps us get through tragedies and celebrate our accomplishments. They create a very loving environment that the kids feel,” said Camille Anderson-Finley, the director of community schools in Montgomery. She said kids have told her that the experience creates the most exciting school day they’ve ever had. “The power of ten equates to the number 10 multiplied by itself to create a perfect number. For us, it signifies the power of shared responsibility between the men in our community and Montgomery Public Schools to help empower our youth and elevate our communities.”
Encouraging equal parental involvement in schools and children’s activities doesn’t have to require a brand new program or a major effort though, says Bremond, of First 5 California. “It’s as simple as getting the dad’s contact info in addition to the mom’s and calling him first when there’s an issue. Or simply warmly welcoming dads, showing that you’re attuned to them and declaring the expectation that they’ll be involved.”
