Posted on Thu, Apr 12, 2012 @ 02:07 PM
We can either accept romantic rejection with dignity or we can deny the loss of a dream and obsess over the love object (and I do mean "object"), becoming a thorn in their side, their stalker or even worse.
It's the "even worse" that was the focus of research by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev and Ruhama Goussinsky, both of the University of Haifa in Israel. Their findings were published in 2008 as In the Name of Love: Romantic Ideology and Its Victims. Why, the book asks, does one man react to unrequited love by murdering his wife or girlfriend, while another walks away and rebuilds his life?
After reviewing existing research and interviewing 18 men convicted of murdering their wives or girlfriends, Ben-Ze'ev and Goussinsky argue that it isn't simply a possessive personality that leads to murder, nor is it accurate to suggest these are merely "crimes of passion." Rather, they write, "what is perceived to be the ultimate expression of romantic love—'I can't live, if living is without you'—is in fact a state of mind that turns the partner, who is perceived to be the sole supplier of meaning, into a hostage." Romantic Ideology, in other words, can carry dangerous undertones for those who swallow it hook, line and sinker.
"You are all that I am living for," sang Elvis Presley in a song titled "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You." The murderers, who insist they still love their partners and always had, echo the words of the bards. "Only she was on my mind," insisted one. "People might say, there's happiness, and I'd tell them, it's her. People might say there's enjoyment, and I'd tell them, it's her. People might say there's a world, and I'd tell them it's her. My life was a black curtain. Just her."
What a heavy burden to place on a person one claims to love. A romantic ideal that paints the partner as a god, responsible for providing us with the sum total of life meaning and happiness is, in reality, an ideal that imprisons them in our selfish expectations. "Genuine romantic love," say the researchers, "should involve first of all profound reciprocity, which is indicative of the crucial caring aspect," They define "profound reciprocity" as an interest in the profound happiness and well-being of the other. "When I do something for my beloved, I do not do it because I expect to get something in return, but because I care so much for her that I want to do it."
Although the murderers in this study claimed they did love their victim and still do, the burden they placed on their beloved contradicts any such claim.
Ben-Ze'ev and Goussinsky argue that their findings pull the rug out from under legal defenses that reduce charges for crimes of passion. The murderer, they insist, considers the consequences and makes the decision to act despite what it will mean to him personally. His choice may be "colored by depression and despair and by his inability to cope with the impending separation." And perhaps it is even helped along by cultural romantic ideals. But it is still a choice.
Extreme examples like these aside, however, Ben Ze'ev and Goussinsky don't completely discount the value of ideals. Ideals are essential, they insist. "They inspire us to improve and approach a standard that we esteem." But the authors also stress the importance of boundaries, and an understanding of human limitations so we can be content with what we have. "In love, as in life," they write, "a measure of positive illusions, accompanied by some awareness of reality as well as compromises and accommodations, is of great survival value."
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Posted on Wed, Mar 28, 2012 @ 03:34 PM
It seems safe to say that nearly everyone has been disappointed in love at least once in their life. Whether the feelings were never returned, or whether they started out mutually before finally fading, we've all known the pain of unrequited love—and this is true even for researchers. Flies, too, as it turns out.
In fact, a recent study found that jilted flies drink more alcohol than their libido-satiated counterparts, which may move us to show a little understanding the next time we find one floating in our whiskey glass. After all, we can easily empathize with a jilted lover, can't we? But what about the other fly? The one who jilted it. There wasn't much talk of her (or him?), which, when you think about it, tends to be the case in the human arena, too. Poets have written about many a broken-hearted lover over the centuries, but oddly, the rejector has been almost completely ignored. That is, until the 1990s when psychologists Roy Baumeister and Sara Wotman published Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love.
In their research, Baumeister and Wotman found an interesting and even surprising trend: like rejected lovers, rejectors also felt significant emotional pain, but would-be lovers were largely unaware of this fact because they were more self-oriented than rejectors. This was traced to the fact that the would-be lovers were "in a state of need rather than caring."
Another problem is that cultural ideologies about love tell us to persist in the face of rejection, a value which seemed to encourage would-be lovers to feel justified behaving in ways that would be considered irrational and inappropriate in other contexts. According to the researchers, they were "mostly oblivious" to the possibility that their actions might make the rejector uncomfortable. In contrast, rejectors felt guilty and pained by their own inability to return the other's love.
"Without the blinding effects of one's own needs," observed the researchers, "rejectors may tend to have a relatively clear notion of what the would-be lover is going through, so that, ironically, the person who is not in love will be the one with the greater level of empathy."
Unfortunately, the emotions of both actors may prolong the awkwardness. Reluctant to cause pain, the object of affection may express rejection too gently to impress the would-be lover; especially considering that would-be lovers have a natural tendency to filter out rejecting messages and amplify positive ones.
Overall, would-be lovers emerged from the study "fairly unaware of what the rejector goes through," noted the researchers. "Perhaps they did, dimly, sense that their attentions may have become unwelcome or even intrusive at times, but, being themselves overwhelmed with the catastrophe of doomed passion, they had little sympathy or compassion to spare for anyone else."
One may well wonder whether it is a hallmark of love to be so preoccupied with one's own needs that one ignores the needs of the "loved" one. Rather, it's probably the first clue that it's time to pick up the pieces of one's heart and move on with at least a little dignity intact.
And it is possible to move on. Contrary to the cultural messages we receive from our first fairy tale, pairing off in a romantic relationship isn't the end-all on the road to happiness; and there really isn't one—and only one—possible love in the world for each person. People do find deep, fulfilling love again after the death of a beloved spouse; and many in arranged marriages have grown to love one another as profoundly as any couple who believe that they "fell" in love at first sight.
Come to that, love is not something you "fall" easily into, is it? We may have an initial attraction, but in reality, turning attraction into love requires purposeful commitment, time, attention and a great deal of good, old-fashioned hard work.
Unfortunately, when it's us and the relationship we want, it can be easy to ditch reality in favor of a mistaken hope that this really is our one "true" chance at love and that if we are persistent enough, he or she will become as convinced of that as we are. But trying to force another to return our emotion is self-focused and destructive to both parties.
Admittedly, picking up the pieces of one's heart and moving on isn't easy, but there's a common denominator among those who are successful at it. The successful ones tend to reach out to their other social and family relationships, making the most of them for support, encouragement and human connection. On the other hand, the unsuccessful ones end up floating like a jilted barfly in a whiskey glass. Or worse, perhaps: like the jilted lovers you'll read about in the next post.
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Posted on Thu, Feb 09, 2012 @ 11:03 AM
In the last few posts we've been talking about some of the ways our thinking lets us down when we're chugging along on intuition, or System 1, as Nobel Prize-winning researcher Daniel Kahneman calls it. System 1, he says, operates silently and automatically in the background, providing impressions, impulses, intuitions and instant conclusions about what we hear and see. When you've got that peaceful, easy feeling, you know System 1 is at the helm. As long as you're in a state of "cognitive ease," your thinking will be fairly superficial because of the relaxed vigilance of System 2, which is the more effortful, analytic thinking mode.
Interestingly, just as cognitive ease increases a good mood, a good mood conversely increases cognitive ease. In other words, says, Kahneman, "A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors."
This is because System 1 will jump to its conclusions on the basis of the relatively scanty information it is processing automatically and unless (or until) a sense of cognitive strain mobilizes System 2, the intuitive answers supplied by System 1 will hold sway. "Remember," says Kahneman, "that System 2 is lazy and that mental effort is aversive."
What does this mean for critical thinking?
Simply this: Take your mood into account when you have important decisions to make. That peaceful, easy feeling may be beneficial to your physical and mental health, but it also means your System 2 is weaker than usual and you may be tempted to let your intuitions rule you inappropriately.
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Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo: Teaching Chidlren Decision-Making Skills
Self Regulation: Teaching Children the Art of Self-Control
Posted on Sun, Jan 22, 2012 @ 01:00 PM
In the last post we saw that the ability to think critically requires that we have enough self-control to resist our initial gut reactions. This allows us time to root out any biases or distortions that may be obstructing our thinking. Unfortunately, sometimes we simply fail to entertain the notion that we have biases, especially if we are not used to thinking about how we are thinking—a skill referred to as metacognition.
In other cases, we may know biases are possible but (of course) we don't have any. And we "know" this because we believe we're capable of recognizing our biases even though our personal history may be replete with proof that we are not. For instance, let's say "Jane" has a bias toward expecting the worst of others. In nine encounters out of ten, the worst doesn't actually happen, but Jane is unable to apply that experience to changing her view of the people in her life. She misses the clues in her own daily experience that should help her see that her thinking processes are skewed: that she has a deep-seated bias operating. This bias is probably hurting many of her relationships. And even though she may be aware that biases in her thinking are possible, this one completely eludes her—a state of affairs which has been called metacognitive dissonance.
This failure of metacognition, operating together with an array of potential thinking distortions, is believed to be at the heart of many mental health issues, including a state researchers are beginning to call pathological altruism. A pathological altruist has been defined by researcher Barbara Oakley (along with other experts who are pioneering this new area of study) as, "a person who sincerely engages in what he or she intends to be altruistic acts, but who harms the very person or group he or she is trying to help, often in unanticipated fashion; or harms others; or irrationally becomes a victim of his or her own altruistic actions" (Oakley et al., 2012, p. 4).
Our example, Jane, may fall prey to pathological altruism in feeling as though she needs to step in and "help" everyone around her since no one is capable of performing up to her standards. As a result, her children may never learn to clean their own rooms, her husband may lose the motivation to participate in family planning and decision making, and her friends may stop offering to help in the kitchen after her dinner parties. To all appearances, Jane is a paragon of self-sacrifice, but there's a dark side to her helpfulness: she has created a situation that is potentially harmful to herself as well as to her family.
Of course, Jane's situation is relatively mild in comparison to that of some other pathological altruists one might meet. According to researchers, the potential results of pathological altruism might include animal hoarding, eating disorders, suicide bombings, dictatorships or genocide.
Can the human brain really be so susceptible to self-delusion that some of the world's worst problems can be traced to a mistaken belief in motivations of altruism? Do we know any pathological altruists personally? Ourselves, perhaps? (And before any of us instinctively answers "no" to that last question, we may want to resist that initial impulse long enough to reconsider the concept of metacognitive dissonance.)
Reference:
Oakley, B., Knafo, A. and McGrath, M. (2012). Pathological Altruism—An Introduction. In B. Oakley, A. Knafo, G. Madhaven, & D. S. Wilson (Eds.), Pathological Altruism (pp. 77-93). New York: Oxford University Press.
Posted on Wed, Jan 18, 2012 @ 01:33 PM
Economists, educators and policy makers like to ask a basic question that parents should also be concerned about in terms of their children: What makes some people more susceptible than others to biases of judgment?
Perhaps you've heard of a famous experiment in which four-year-olds were given a choice between a small reward "now" or a larger reward "later," intended to test their self-control? If so, you also know that the researchers kept tabs on the children. Ten or fifteen years later, those who had resisted temptation were not only less likely to take drugs, but they also had better executive control in cognitive tasks and attention, and they scored higher on intelligence tests. In other words, they had a higher capacity for critical thinking.
Why is self-control so closely connected to the ability to think critically? According to Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his research in decision making, one of the reasons is that critical thinking requires the ability to resist the "easy" or "intuitive" answer. Like the children who resisted the "easy" reward, people with good critical thinking skills are deliberate and thoughtful in their approach. They are willing to invest the effort to check their first instincts. Kahneman refers to them as more "engaged," and explains that "they are more alert, more intellectually active, less willing to be satisfied with superficially attractive answers, more skeptical about their intuitions."
In other words, they have the self-control to stop and think about how they think. Where did they get this self-control? Research suggests there are some genetic influences, but the same body of research also points to the importance of parenting techniques.
Of course, even though we, as parents, may want to pass down strengths like self-control, critical thinking, and good decision making, the task will be nearly impossible if we don't possess these skills ourselves.
Just for fun, you may want to try the simple puzzle Kahneman includes in his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. "Do not try to solve it, " he instructs, "but listen to your intuition":
A bat and ball cost $1.10.
The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
A number came to your mind. The number, of course, is 10: 10₵. The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing, and wrong. Do the math, and you will see. If the ball costs 10₵, then the total cost will be $1.20 (10₵ for the ball and $1.10 for the bat), not $1.10. The correct answer is 5₵. It is safe to assume that the intuitive answer also came to the mind of those who ended up with the correct number—they somehow managed to resist the intuition (Kahneman, 2011, p. 44).
Interestingly, many thousands of university students have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle in research experiments and the majority give the intuitive, though incorrect, answer. Depending on the selectivity of the university, the rate of failure to check intuition was between 50% and 80%.
"Many people," Kahneman concludes, "are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible."
As tempting as it is to believe he's overstating the case, perhaps this is a good time to test your ability to resist temptation. The truth of the matter is that, even as we hope to teach our children the self-control required to resist thier intuition and become good decision makers, it's highly likely we have room for improvement in these areas ourselves.
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Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo: Teaching Chidlren Decision-Making Skills
Self Regulation: Teaching Children the Art of Self-Control
Posted on Wed, Jan 11, 2012 @ 05:42 PM
Most of us, at one time or another, have been guilty of using the withdrawal of our love, affection, or attention as a tool to coerce others into doing what we want them to do. Couples may give each other the silent treatment when they are displeased, parents may pointedly ignore their children in an attempt to express disapproval of their behavior. Friends may cut one another out of their circle over real or imagined slights, gossip, or failure to conform to the group's social norms. But does our cold shoulder really get us what we want?
Clearly, that depends on what it is that we want. Do we want revenge? Do we want to "win" at all costs—establish our superiority in the social food chain? Do we want one more fix of that very seductive self-righteous chemical brain rush we get when we are sure we're right and the other person is wrong, and we get to be the one who puts them in their place before trumpeting our victory to our cronies? (This description isn't just a literary device. Research suggests that the chemical released in the brain during a self-righteous episode can literally be addictive.)
If what we want is repair, connection, and good physical and mental health outcomes for all concerned—including ourselves—then the answer is no. Turning a cold shoulder won't get us what we want. Lest you doubt (and don't we all love a little doubt when our favored behaviors are being questioned?) there is a vast bibliography of research to convince us. I will include some specific studies at the end of this post, but in short, social exclusion numbs our victims. It makes them less able to think coherently, limits their self-control, even cuts their empathy for others off at the knees.
Those being excluded DO crave connection, but rather than risk rejection by returning to former loved ones they will look for acceptance in less intimidating quarters. And considering their equally less discriminating state of mind, these new connections may not be the most conducive for good life outcomes.
"The need to belong," write researchers Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, "is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation."
It would be prudent to give careful thought to any actions that might underestimate this need. When used as a tool for coercion it can have unanticipated consequences.
Further Reading:
Social Exclusion Impairs Self-Regulation, Baumeister et al. (2010), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 88(4), Apr 2005, 589-604.
Alone but feeling no pain: Effects of social exclusion on physical pain tolerance and pain threshold, affective forecasting, and interpersonal empathy. DeWall and Baumeister (2006), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 91(1), Jul 2006, 1-15.
Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior, Twenge et al, (2007). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 92(1), Jan 2007, 56-66.
Social Exclusion and the Deconstructed State: Time Perception, Meaninglessness, Lethargy, Lack of Emotion, and Self-Awareness, Twenge et al. (2003). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 85(3), Sep 2003, 409-423.
Effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes: Anticipated aloneness reduces intelligent thought, Baumeister et al. (2002). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 83(4), Oct 2002, 817-827.
Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the "porcupine problem." Maner, et al. (2007). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 92(1), Jan 2007, 42-55.
Silence Is Not Golden, Stepp (2007).
People: Who Needs Them?, Stepp (2011)
Posted on Mon, Nov 28, 2011 @ 08:58 AM
Thanksgiving week brought my adult daughter home for her first visit since last August when she took a job nearly 3,000 miles away. While this circumstance alone would have been enough to make this Thanksgiving Day a joyful occasion, we also had the pleasure of being with "chosen family," those special relationships we develop that blur the lines between blood relatives and close friends.
Unfortunately it's impossible to have every treasured family member with us on every holiday, but in these cases it makes sense to treasure those family and friends that we can have with us, while also being grateful for all of our loved ones however scattered they may be.
Research continues to underscore the multiple benefits we reap from every one of these varied relationships. Whether or not we have spouse, children, mother, father, siblings or cousins, aunts and uncles or grandparents—we can nevertheless fill our lives with close friends and other social relationships that contribute just as much to our health and happiness.
However, doing so requires conscious effort on our part. Relationships can't be maintained, or even formed in the first place, if we are uninterested in actively reaching out to others. Thankfully, especially considering how common it is for family to be widely scattered in our mobile society, technology has provided us with tools that can help make this task just a little easier. And while there may certainly be some few who allow these technologies to crowd out their real-life relationships, an increasing body of research into the social impact of sites such as Facebook finds that most people use technology to strengthen and maintain relationships that are already important in their lives.
Researchers have long realized that silence, at least in the quest for healthy relationships is not golden—rather, relationships thrive when frequent communication is set against a healthy backdrop of gratitude for the ability to connect. It may be worth asking ourselves the question: Is my family among those who use social technology as a tool for increasing and maintaining communication?
Posted on Thu, Sep 08, 2011 @ 12:10 PM
The image of the nuclear family is ubiquitous in modern Western culture: it has been captured in countless photographs, immortalized in books and electronic media, and hailed as the foundation of an ideal society. And while on one level we may recognize that not every family is neatly organized with parents, children, and perhaps a dog or cat thrown in for good measure, it is nevertheless common for us to think of "a family" as a closed unit composed of those specific kinds of relationships.
Clearly, when one adult asks another, "Do you have a family?" they usually mean "Are you married? Do you have children?" However, as social psychologist Bella DePaulo points out in her 2006 book, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, “there are, of course, other meanings of family.” This leads her to question why most of us seem to expect single adults to reply: "No, I don't," rather than “Oh, yes, I have a family. . . . I have a brother, a sister, three cousins, a grandmother, an uncle and two aunts.”
Increasing evidence confirms the importance of these family members. In fact, says Robert Milardo, researcher and author of The Forgotten Kin: Aunts and Uncles, "relationships among siblings are among the more resilient, long lasting, and intimate of family ties, and with the introduction of children, the roles of aunt and uncle are added to the mix of bonds linking siblings and their partners or spouses."
In a recent three-way interview, I had the privilege of speaking with both DePaulo and Milardo about many of the reasons why "collateral kin," such as aunts and uncles, warrant inclusion in our paradigms of family.
"The idea of a nuclear family doesn’t seem to represent how families really live," Milardo remarked. "Many do, but many do not. I think public rhetoric says families are organized that way. We often talk about them as unique households, but we really often live across households."
DePaulo agreed, adding that stereotypes of the nuclear family may be played out more in the official display of family, such as in photographs or at public events, rather than in a family's actual practice at home. "You and your 'significant other' may be invited to brunch, or whatever the occasion might be," she offered by way of an example, "but 'significant other' is understood to mean a romantic relationship partner. Well, if I live near, or even with, a sibling or a grown niece or nephew and they are very close to me, why should that person not have the same standing as a boyfriend I may have been involved with for one month?”
Indeed, DePaulo and Milardo each note that the remarkable invisibility of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and adult siblings in public life is inconsistent with their equally remarkable importance in the private lives of many families.
"To be sure," acknowledges Milardo, "not all families are in frequent communication, but then not all exist as isolated households. One need only recall travel patterns on major North American holidays to confirm this."
Those who are not fortunate enough to live near blood relatives may also burst the somewhat artificial boundaries of the nuclear family by cultivating relationships with "chosen" kin: close friends who for all practical purposes fulfill the roles of sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles or grandparents. Moreover, physically far-flung relatives may not actually be all that "distant" anymore, thanks to the advent of social networking sites like Facebook. Whatever the drawbacks may be of such technologies, they have nevertheless been found to foster those exchanges of the small details of daily life that help family members to feel connected to one another.
Research into the importance of collateral relatives (including chosen kin) still has a long way to go, but it is encouraging to see that DePaulo, Milardo, and others are well on the way to opening at least a small window into these too-often neglected family resources.
Posted on Fri, Jul 01, 2011 @ 03:40 PM
Parents of multiple children may feel they spend far too much of their time heading off seemingly constant bickering, bullying and fighting between their progeny. If this describes you, perhaps you have wondered whether to shrug it off as normal sibling rivalry—something that must simply be waited out. On the other hand, perhaps you've worried about whether your kids exhibit the same kind of behavior toward other children at school or elsewhere? (See "Dating Violence Overlaps with Peer and Sibling Violence.")
While it's true that sibling relationships do change and grow across the lifespan, current research underscores that it is perfectly appropriate for parents to be concerned when they see a pattern of negative interactions between their children. Interestingly, both the bullied as well as the bullying siblings may potentially act out among their peers. The good news, according to sibling researchers such as Dr. Laurie Kramer, is that parents can have an important influence on whether and how well their children get along with one another.
One way parents can influence their children's relationships is by guarding against preferential treatment, or favoritism. While it may be very difficult for parents to recognize that some of their well-meaning actions reflect bias, self-honesty about this destructive influence could mean the difference between a lifetime of camaraderie between their children and a lifetime of suspicion and resentment.
Even beyond simple day-to-day actions that could be construed as favoritism, the fundamental quality of each parent-child bond is also an important factor. When two siblings each have secure attachment to their caregivers, they are also more likely to have secure, positive relationships with one another (Whiteman, McHale, and Soli, 2011).
This kind of relationship is one of the best gifts parents can offer their children: one that will outlast a parents' own lifetime, and will certainly persist long after the siblings leave home. While some assume that sibling relationships change permanently when children marry and establish their own families, studies find that these life changes present only temporary distancing as siblings focus on new life stages. According to Shawn Whiteman of Purdue University and his colleagues Susan McHale and Anna Soli of Pennsylvania State University, "In middle and later adulthood, contact between siblings stabiizes and most siblings maintain contact with one another throughout the life course." More than half of siblings studied in a U.S. sample of more than 7,700 adult siblings in 1992 remained close, contacting one another at least once a month. "Moreover," adds Whiteman and his colleagues, "because computer-mediated communications such as e-mail, blogs, and Facebook have made it easier for individuals and family members to stay connected and because older adults are using these technologies at greater rates than in the past, it is likely that adult siblings are more involved and informed than in recent memory." (See Social Networking Sites and Our Lives, Pew Research Center, June 2011.)
Considering the importance of these relationships throughout the lifespan, sibling bullying, bickering, and fighting should not be taken lightly. Fortunately, researchers are now focusing on this research area, catching up wtih parents, who have always had a stake in working at building healthy sibling relationships.
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Posted on Thu, Jun 16, 2011 @ 11:08 AM
As Father's Day approaches it seems the perfect time for mothers and children to remind dads that they aren't just a "third wheel" in our lives. Well, sure, I know families who get along just fine without dads, just as I know others who get along just fine without moms. Given balanced social networks, we can all richly bolster our children's development and well-being when we need to.
Nevertheless, those fathers who have the opportunity to be part of their children's lives need to know that the benefits fathers offer children are just as important as those mothers offer, even though mothers have long been assumed to be the only really necessary caretaker in the lives of children.
Further, contrary to other common assumptions, those benefits that fathers offer are not only for sons. The relationship between fathers and daughters is just as important as the more easily esteemed bond between fathers and sons. In addition, these benefits do not only relate to those traits in fathers commonly considered "masculine," such as rough-and-tumble play. Rather, children need nurturance and caregiving from fathers as well as from mothers.
Unfortunately, misconceptions that men are not naturally "nurturing" have handicapped fathers in performing this important function. Just ask Scott Lancaster, Stefan Korn, and Eric Mooij, founders of DIY Father, a fast-growing site dedicated to providing dads with useful parenting information and helping them become "the best fathers they can be." In their own families, these dads (and others like them) are living testimony to the fact that nurturance and caregiving are not the sole province of moms, and that dads are vital developmental resources for children, even from the early weeks of pregnancy.
Of course, as the following two articles demonstrate, policy-makers and employers may be far behind fathers themselves in recognizing this important family resource.
BOSTON, June 15 (Reuters Life!) - Many fathers these days want it all -- time with kids, promotions at work and a spouse who shares the parenting duties.
NEW YORK, June 15 (Reuters Life!) - Many U.S. mothers feel like single parents, whether they are married or not, and two out of three resent handling all the household chores even when they prefer their partners to stand aside, a new survey shows.