In the National Post, Misty Harris reports that — contrary to certain assertions from the gender war front — fathers actually do have a positive role to play in the lives of their children:
Though the prevailing Father’s Day question is what to get Dad, a new study suggests the more pressing issue is what dads can give in return.
In a long-term analysis of 36 international studies of nearly 11,000 parents and children, researchers have found that a father’s love contributes as much — and sometimes more — to a child’s development as that of a mother, while perceived rejection creates a larger ripple on personality than any other type of experience.
The power of paternal rejection or acceptance is especially strong in cases where the father is seen by his child as having heightened prestige in the family, as this tends to boost his influence.
“In our half-century of international research, we’ve not found any other class of experience that has as strong and consistent an effect on personality as does the experience of rejection — especially by parents in childhood,” says co-author Ronald Rohner, whose study appears in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.
My relationship with my father was less than positive, and I don’t think I’m mischaracterizing it by calling it “rejection”. However, he did provide me with a useful parenting template: I could usually figure out what to do as a parent by remembering what my own father did … then not doing that.
