Highlights
of Findings from Dr. Warren Farrell’s
Father and Child Reunion
by
Warren Farrell, Ph.D.
Part I
The Family Arrangements that Work Best for Children
Father and Child Reunion (2001) is a
meta-analysis of hundreds of studies from the U.S. and other
countries. Many of the studies look at what leads to children doing
the best and worse after divorce. The documentation for these
findings is in Father and Child Reunion.
These are the family structures ranked according to the ones in
which children do the best—the last three after divorce:
Intact family
Shared Parent Time With the Following Three Conditions:
the child has about equal time with mom and dad
parents live close enough to each other that the child does not need
to forfeit friends or activities when visiting the other parent
no bad-mouthing
Primary father time (primary father custody)4. Primary mother time
Perhaps the most surprising is that children raised by single dads
do better in more than 20 areas of measurement in comparison to
children raised by single moms. These measurements include academic
progress, social competence, psychological health and physical
health.
Caveat. This does not mean that men are better fathers than women
are mothers. Single fathers usually have more income and education,
tend to be older, and are more self-selected, thus more highly
motivated. Single dads in the year 2004 are similar to female
doctors in the 1950s: exceptionally motivated.
One reason, though, that children on average do so much better with
single dads is ironic— it is rare for the single mom to disappear
from the child’s life. To moms’ credit, they are more likely to stay
involved; to dad’s credit, dads are more likely to facilitate mom’s
involvement than mom is to facilitate dad’s. In brief, the child
living primarily with dad is more likely to live in conditions that
come closer to the intact family than is the child living primarily
with mom.
Why this difference? One clue appears to be the bad-mouthing gap.
When Glynnis Walker, in her research for Solomon’s Children, asked
children years after divorce which parent bad-mouthed the other, the
children were almost five times more likely to say “only mom says
bad things about dad” than vice versa. Also, dads are more likely to
ask for mom’s input and value mom’s input, thus encouraging mom to
remain involved. Perhaps as a result, when children live with only
their moms, the parents are nine times as likely to have conflict as
when children live with their dads.
These findings are significant for two reasons. First, because in
high-conflict divorces if we conclude that the parental conflict
will prevent 50-50 involvement from working, we tend to revert to
primary mother time, when in fact it’s far more likely that with
primary father time the parents will have less conflict, and that
the children will have more of both parents, and will do better.
Second, once primary father time is understood to have these
advantages, and therefore becomes the first choice of the law if
there is conflict, it eliminates any incentive the mom may feel to
make the divorce appear to be high-conflict because she knows that
will lead to her having the child. Once she knows the likely
alternative to equal involvement is primary father involvement, the
incentive is to reduce conflict and have equal involvement—which is
better than primary father involvement. If, of course, the dad is
the primary alienator, the current preference for the mother should
remain.
Let’s look at why the following three conditions seem to work best
or children after divorce:
First, the child has about equal time with mom and dad
Second, parents live close enough to each other that the child does
not need to forfeit friends or activities when visiting the other
parent
Third, no bad-mouthing
First, the Child Has about Equal Time with Mom and Dad.
One-Parent Stability vs. Two-Parent Stability. Until now, we have
understandably thought that amid the instability of divorce,
children experience the most stability by staying primarily with the
parent who has been their primary parent. I call this “one-parent
stability.” However, the research shows that one-parent “stability”
in reality creates psychological instability. Children with minimal
exposure to the other parent after divorce seem to feel abandoned,
and often psychologically rudderless-- even when they succeed on the
surface (e.g., good grades).
Children with both parents, and especially children with substantial
father contact, do better--even when socio-economic variables are
controlled for. They do better on their SATs, on their social
skills, on their self-esteem, in their physical health, in their
ability to be assertive, and, surprisingly, the more dad involvement
the more a child is likely to be empathetic. These children are far
less likely to suffer from nightmares, temper tantrums, being
bullied, or have other signs of feeling like a victim.
These findings occur even though one and two-year old children of
divorce with developmental disabilities are fifteen times more
likely to be given to fathers to raise, and children who are raised
by moms and have problems with the 5 D’s (drinking, drugs,
depression, delinquency, disobedience) are most likely to be given
to their dads to “take over” in early teenage years. The propensity
of dads to take on the more challenging children and yet still have
positive outcomes speaks highly of dads’ contributions.
Nevertheless, these children still do not do as well as when the
children are in an intact family, or when the involvement of both
mom and dad are closer to equal.
Why does the approximately equal involvement of both parents appear
so important, and even more crucial after a divorce? No one knows
for certain, but here appears to be three rarely-discussed possible
reasons that emanate from “between the lines”. I believe they are
crucial to a cutting-edge understanding of child development:
The child is half mom and half dad. The job of a child growing up is
to discover whom it is. Who is it? It is half mom and half dad. It
is not the better parent. It is both parents, warts and all. So we
are not talking about fathers’ rights, mothers’ rights or even the
child’s right to both parents. We are talking about a new paradigm:
the child’s right to both halves of itself. Psychological stability
seems to emanate from the child knowing both parts of itself.
The implications for the court is that there is much less need for
psychological testing of both parents—if the child does better by
being about equally with both parents, warts and all, we don’t have
to conduct a court battle as to which parent has the fewest warts.
The “warts” that matter are bad-mouthing and alienation of the other
parent; the desire to move the child away from the other parent;
being consistently physically abusive; being sexually abusive.
Checks and balances. Dads and moms, like Republicans and Democrats,
provide checks and balances. Moms tend to overstress protection;
dads may overstress risk-taking—there has to be a balance of power
for the child to absorb a balance of both parents’ values. One
parent dominating tends to leave the child with a stereotyped and
biased perspective of the values of the minority parent, and
ultimately the child is unappreciative of that part of itself. The
minority parent becomes a straw-man or straw-woman, thus that part
of the child becomes a straw self. The minority parent becomes
undervalued, thus that part of the child becomes undervalued to
itself.
Overnights. As children enter adolescence, they connect best with
the values of the parents during the peaceful moments prior to
bedtime, often the only time when the pressures of peers recede and
the presence of parents’ values can reenter the child’s psyche.
Second, Parents Living Close.
When children have to forfeit friends or activities to be with the
other parent, resentment toward the parent is created just when
parental involvement is most needed in balance with independence.
Whether during the earlier years or adolescence, neither one can be
forfeited.
Third, No Bad Mouthing
Criticizing the other parent is criticizing the child—it is
criticizing the half of the child that is the other parent. As the
child looks in the mirror and sees that his or her body language is
the body language of the criticized parent, the child fears she or
he might also be an “irresponsible jerk,” “liar,” or whatever…
Bad-mouthing the other parent is the most insidious forms of child
abuse because the child feels she or he has no place to go—arguing
with the parent doing the bad-mouthing makes the child the parent’s
enemy; reporting it to the parent being bad-mouthed threatens to
lead to parental arguments which further erode the child’s
stability.
Those are the three most important conditions after divorce for the
best likely outcome for the child. If dad is so important, though,
what are his conscious and unconscious contributions?
Dr. Warren Farrell
is the author of many books, including two award-winning
international best-sellers, Why Men Are The Way They Are plus
The Myth of Male Power. His most recent books are Women
Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, which was a selection of the
Book-of-the-Month Club, and Father and Child Reunion about
how fathers can be successful at both work and home. His latest
book, just published this year, Why Men Earn More: The Startling
Truth Behind the Pay Gap and What Women Can Do About It, helps
both employers and employees understand what makes a company want to
increase an employee’s pay. His books are published in over 50
countries, and in 10 languages.
Dr. Warren Farrell is available for expert
testimony to help fathers stay equally involved in their children's
lives after divorce.
CLICK HERE to contact Dr. Warren Farrell for information.
www.WarrenFarrell.net (Why Men Earn More)
www.WarrenFarrell.biz (Father and Child Reunion)
www.WarrenFarrell.org (The Myth of Male Power)
www.WarrenFarrell.info (Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say)
www.WarrenFarrell.us (Why Men Are The Way They Are)
www.WarrenFarrell.ws (The Liberated Man)
Copyright 2004 Warren Farrell, Ph.D., all rights
reserved
