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Five reasons involved fatherhood is good for everyone

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The feminists Gary Barker and Michael Kaufman are on a mission to promote “caring masculinities” around the world, particularly in relation to fatherhood. Here we share the top five reasons they say involved fatherhood is good for everyone.

In a recent article for The Daily Beast, Kaufman and Barker said:

“With all the years of women’s empowerment and the push for gender equality, we still have trouble imagining that men can do the care work, that they matter for children, and that they matter for women’s equality.

“In middle and upper income countries—the U.S. and Europe—we have achieved something closer to pay equality and something closer to equality in terms of who does the domestic and care work. In these regions, men are now doing between 30 and 45 percent of the care work.”

Kaufman and Barker argue that helping fathers around the world to be more involved in childcare can have transform the lives of men women and children. Here are five of the reasons they saying involved fatherhood is good for everyone.

1. Involved fatherhood reduces crime

Kaufman and Barker cite a study that followed 1,000 low income young men in high-risk neighbourhoods in Boston over forty-five years from the 1950s which found that one of the biggest factors that kept men out of gangs and away from criminal activity was being a dad. This is evidence, they say, that caregiving transforms men.

2. Reduces violence against women

Kaufman and Barker also claim that “evidence is piling up that as men do more of the caregiving, violence against women falls”.

3. Men’s wellbeing improves (and so does their sex life)

“Caregiving is good for men,” say Kaufman and Barker “we have richer, healthier lives and more meaningful relationships of all kinds. We learn that our job is not everything. The health, happiness and well-being of men, children and women improve [and] couples report better sex lives”.

4. Men get a biological high from fatherhood

There is a growing body of biological research showing that fathers, like mothers, are hard-wired to care for children. When fathers hold and play with their children, the hormones oxytocin and prolactin kick in, priming us for bonding. The more men care for children, the more our bodies respond to the task.

5. Involved fatherhood is good for the economy

A study over 15 years in the U.S. found that men’s salaries increase 6% for every child they have while women’s salaries decrease by 4% for every child they have as men work more hours after having children, while women shift to jobs with more flexibility and fewer hours. If women did as much paid work as men, the U.S. GDP would be 9% higher, say Kaufman and Barker. If men did more caregiving, women would do more breadwinning, they argue.

Three steps to making it happen

Kaufman and Barker suggest three key actions that could help dads all over the world become more involved in caregiving.

1. Paid parental leave

In countries where paid paternity leave is the norm, dads are more involved in caregiving. For this to work, a portion of parental leave must be ring-fenced specifically for fathers, and workplaces must create a culture that supports men in taking leave, say Kaufman and Barker. They cite the example of Norway, where more than 90% of men who are fathers take at least six weeks of paid leave.

2. Intervene early

Kaufman and Barker believe that “we have to promote men’s caregiving early on [to] provide opportunities for boys and girls to question out-dated notions of manhood and womanhood, and provide opportunities for both to practice involved caregiving in the classroom and beyond”. They also suggest intervention with fathers in ante-natal settings to support and promote involved fatherhood.

3. Include fatherhood in international policy debates

According to Kaufman and Barker, fatherhood gets little attention in policy debates, gets scarce mention in UN reports and seldom shows up in the reports of international aid organizations. Supporting fathers all over the world to be involved in parenting is, they say, a key overlooked strategy in reducing poverty.

To find out more see: how good dads can change the world. 

—Photo/Flickr/b3nscott

To mark the launch of the film Down Dog, insideMAN is running a series of articles about fatherhood throughout February and we’d love you to get involved. You can join the conversation on twitter by using the hashtag #MenBehavingDADly; leave a comment in the section below or email us with your thoughts and ideas for articles to insideMANeditor@gmail.com.

For more information about the film see www.downdogfilm.com

  • Nigel

    They are of course quite right that giving males the time, space and support to enjoy their offspring is a good thing for all. Yet they are hampered by the fact that feminists ( at least those in policy organisations ) consistently oppose this. Opposing a presumption of shared care, fathers on birth certificates and other official documents, shared parental leave, linking payment of child support to seeing it well spent, demonisation of all men as abusers, targeting assistance to women ( does Oxfam really believe it’s own statements that giving aid to men in the third world is a bad thing). I could go on and on about the ways avowed feminist organisations block equality in care of children. Rather they are treated as a “prize” in a supposed war or a bargaining chip in a tussle for resources. 
    A number of years ago Michael Kaufman said of his workshops for young men in college, that if he and others didn’t listen to and acknowledge the young men’s experiences of taunting, stalking, violence in their relationships; people like him would seen seen as lying. And that is the problem the lack of listening to men themselves and engaging with the reasons that in surveys  80% of fathers wish they could spend more time with their offspring yet clearly don’t have a way of making this happen. Clearly if the patriarchy did exist then this would have been done, as so many men want it! 
    No if Barker and Kaufman are serious about their project the first nay sayers they have to takle are their sistas in the feminist movement who seem so much in agreement with the Victorians that children are women’s business. 

  • Nigel

    And Norway. So long as the Oil and Gas workers and the Bankers of the stupendous Sovereign Fund remain in work the rest of Norway could go on leave next week for literally decades with barely a dent in their GDP. So good example of what can be done with huge wealth but not so useful in the practical application. I do want to see a better life for men and women, children and also our older folk but this won’t happen if the realities are not engaged with. Not least because it is the poorest amongst us that are damaged most by ill thought out policy.  The start here is to include boys and men in the formulation of a future rather than assemble a rag bag of initiatives from elsewhere. Where I agree with the authors is that it starts with treating the aspirations concerns and experiences of boys and men as legitimate and important in the formulation of “father” and indeed “family”. 

  • http://redpilluk.co.uk William Collins

    Great Scott! You mean to tell me that feminists have discovered that, (1) single parent families herald poor outcomes for children, including gang involvement to name but one thing, (2) that marriage is the safest environment for mothers, (3) that a stable relationship improves men’s outcomes too, (4) that the oxytocin bond works for men too, (5) that a stable marriage improves economic prospects for men, women and children. Well, who is it that’s been trying to get these statistical truisms across for some considerable time? Not the feminists. I suppose there is reason for some optimism…except for the one tiny little gripe. Under “steps to make it happen” they seem to have overlooked the fact that feminism has had as its avowed aim the ejection of men from the family from the start, a policy which they have pursued with great success for half a century. I hate to say its their fault – no I don’t – it’s their fault. Instead of a confession, which would logically be due at this point, we get the old “men just have to be more caring” line. It doesn’t matter how good a father you may be if you’re chucked out. Do the authors even believe what they are saying, or is it just cynical smoke and mirrors?

  • Nigel

    The clue is of course that they can’t bring themselves to advocate marriage. So that what they’re really saying is that men should be good fathers without any security in that role. Because giving security to men that those that they care for are indeed “theirs” is Patriarchy. I think we have smoke and mirrors here.

  • karen woodall

    the clue is in the oxcytocin and the prolactin…involved fatherhood is fine for the feminists so long as it is about making men more like women…testosterone doesn’t come into it, presumably that’s because it’s that nasty stuff that makes men such violent beasts.

    feminist men are no better than their testosterone ridden brothers in the eyes of feminists, twas not so long ago that you had some woman on here telling Duncan Fisher king of the feminist men, to get his hands off her lived experience.

    Kaufman et al are singing into the wind …. until the gender war stops and we accept that equalities is not about how to make men and women the same but about supporting what is different between us and the value of that in children’s lives fatherhood will continue to be seen as a) problematic, b) dangerous and c) not particularly meaningful to the lives of children.

    The answer lies in reshaping the argument about equality in my view and demonstrating that feminism is not THE road to equality but A road to women’s equality.