Diary of a day

I nudge my 6-year- old son awake, get him breakfast, walk him to the bus stop, drive his 4-year-old sister to preschool. After school I separate son and daughter because they're fighting, wrestle with them in the family room, watch a video with them after dinner, and talk with them as my wife and I take our turns at bedtime. It's a day not unlike the day before, filled with the usual humdrum stuff of life with father. Child-development researchers say all this is making me "effectively and formatively salient" to my children. In English that means that just by playing tickle monster or talking about whom they sat with at school that day, I'm fulfilling crucial roles in their lives - companion, provider, protector, teacher, moral guide - as only a father can.

This is a reassuring message and a source of pride (can you tell?) for men, whose importance in the lives of their children was not given much credence in the past. After all, women do most of the nitty-gritty tasks of child rearing and generally spend the most time with their kids. But starting about 20 years ago, researchers began to recognize that they were ignoring half of the parental equation.

Fortunately men today know how valuable they are to their children. The most recent studies show that dads spend 33 percent more time with their kids than their counterparts 20 years earlier, reports Michael Lamb, Ph.D., of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, in The Role of the Father in Child Development (John Wiley Sons). When you combine workdays and weekends, men today spend an average of two to three hours a day engaged with their young children - far more than the oft-cited figure of 12 minutes a day (a statistic drawn from a 35-year-old study that looked only at workdays). But just punching in on the family clock isn't the whole story. "Presence means more than simply being there," says Vivian Gadsden, Ph.D., director of the National Center on Fathers and Families at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. "A father who is engaged can be deeply vested in his children, even when he is absent."

Here are nine ways dads I have that kind of impact

1. Dads are just different.

Once they get past the initial "What would my wife do?" phrase and gain confidence, men develop a distinct style of communication, says Kyle Pruett, Ph.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University. "Saying there's a secret bond is a little too strong, but fathers and children have a special bond, and mothers are often unaware of the level of engagement," says Pruett. "Even if the mother might not think the father is involved, the child may feel very close to him. Sometimes it's the child who fills the mother in on her life with Dad. "My 5-year-old daughter, Katherine, still sucks her thumb sometimes, and I discourage it by pushing her hand aside, while my wife's approach is to chide," says Alex Velicki, an engineer in Garden Grove. California. "So Katherine said to my wife, 'I like Dad's way better than you talking grouchy.'"

2. Dads roughhouse more.

Before a dad picks up a child to hold or comfort her, he usually does something else first, tickles her tummy, sweeps her into he air, taps her on the forehead. And children zero in on this difference very early. "By the age of 8 weeks, infants can distinguish between a male or female approaching," says Pruett. When a baby expects his father to pick him up, he hunches his shoulders, widens his eyes and boosts his breathing and heart rate in anticipation of the coming excitement (which, admittedly, men can sometimes overdo). Dads become rather like oversize versions of the bright, noisy toys we give kids to stimulate their eyesight, hearing, and physical responses, and such physical stimulation is vital to the developing brain. Fathers continue to take a physical approach to togetherness throughout their kids' lives. "Maybe I'm just doing it for myself, because my job is indoors," says Velicki. but when I watch the kids on Saturdays, I always try to get them outside - riding a bike, going to a park or walking on a nature trail. I want them to be in shape so that when they're older, we can go hiking in the mountains."

3. Dads push kids harder.

Whether encouraging children to make physical strides or challenging them to embrace new (and perhaps scary) experiences, dads tend to expect more from kids than moms do. Mothers often move in sooner than fathers to help a child or remove an obstacle," says Pruett. "Fathers encourage children to deal with frustration - they'll say: Get up, you can handle this.' They'll comfort the child, but then they'll say. Back you go."' Alex Velicki sees this in the differing stands he and his wife, Mary Ruth, take on Katherine's learning to ride a bike without training wheels. "I think she could ride on her own if she wanted to," says Velicki. I needle Katherine and say, 'I notice some of your friends can ride,' and Mary Ruth tells me, 'That's not nice. Don't worry, she'll learn.' But I'll ask Katherine to keep trying even if she might fail. Mary Ruth is there to pick up the pieces if she does fail. I think that's best. If both parents pushed, there would be no one for a child to fall back on, but if neither pushed, she would never extend herself."

4. Dads use more complex language.

The male tendency to challenge extends to language as well. In observing couples talking to preschoolers, for example, one study showed that while both men and women simplify their speech for kids' sake, men are more inclined to use big words that stretch children's linguistic skills, a cornerstone of intelligence.

5. Dads are tougher disciplinarians.

"Men bring a kind of emotional distance to the task of discipline," says Jay Belsky, Ph.D., distinguished professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University, in University Park. "It's easier for most men to be firm and demanding, and to hold the line when sending a child to his room, for example, without being emotionally manipulated." Some research has indeed found that fathers are less likely to be permissive than are mothers.

6. Dads prepare a child for the real world.

Men see it as their job to take a child to the mountaintop to show him or her their domain and explain how to master the gritty realities of life. It's a feeling of "strong responsibility to get children ready for the world in pragmatic terms," says Pruett. Partly this may be a matter of teaching useful skills - how to hold a fork or hammer a nail. But the issue of behavior and its consequences weighs especially heavily on a father's coaching priorities. "A father might say, 'If you keep acting like that in the future you won't get a job' or 'You'll seem like a jerk,"' says Pruett. It's not just misbehavior that sparks a father's concern and guidance but any kind of behavior that might come off badly or

result in a gaffe. For example, Tom Anthony, an environmental consultant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, worries about how his pre-teen daughter's shyness keeps her from interacting with peers. "I try to convey to her that if somebody talks to her and she looks down and away it might be interpreted as rudeness - giving a cold shoulder," he says. "I'm trying to impart the importance of appropriate responses in social situations."

7. Dads provide insight into the world of men.

Mom can offer opinions on men. But she can't come close to demonstrating what males are really like, any more than touching sandpaper can show a child how an unshaven, stubbly face actually feels. Providing that real life perspective falls largely to Dad. There's inherent value for both sons and daughters from inclusion in the father's world, says Henry Biller, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, and author of The Father Factor (Pocket Books). Taking kids places, showing them how to use tools, coaching sports, letting them be around his friends - all these things are important. Kids need a realistic frame of reference about men. If a child doesn't have a good relationship with his father he or she is not likely to get this perspective from anyone else. Even when men do the same things as women they might think of them differently. One of Velicki's buddies, for example, recently explained how he felt when he, not his wife, was the person his kids turned to for assistance. "I'm the go-to guy," he said proudly, feeling like the Michael Jordan of the family game.

And kids seem to assign fathers roles that make them feel both safe and comfortable, adds Velicki. "They always come to me if they need something fixed," he says. Even if my wife could handle the situation just as well, they'll always wait until Daddy comes home. It must be nice for them to think there's a person they can always turn to when things are broken.

8. Dads support moms.

One of the most important concepts to emerge in recent research is that fathers can powerfully influence their children indirectly by helping mothers.

Marriage is a support system for both mothering and fathering," says Belsky. "If you have a psychologically healthy, caring father, the mother has more emotional resources to give to the child. That's not only because he's taking some of the load off by diverting, bathing, reading to, playing with, or watching the kids but also because he cares for and appreciates the mother, which helps provide some of the emotional energy she needs."

Seen in this light, the traditional father's role of bringing home a wage should not be downplayed, says Belsky. Children in an economically advantaged home tend to have better housing and a better neighborhood, while the family has less economic stress and more child-care options," he says. "The breadwinner is definitely doing something for the kids." Couples need to work out for themselves what roles they are comfortable taking on or passing off. Some men simply bring home the bacon, then sit down and act authoritative, and that's fine for some women, but for others it's clearly not," says Belsky. The issue is to determine what each member of the couple desires and to work together as a team."

9. Dads foster a child's success.

Taken together, the ways in which fathers are involved with their kids produce measurable effects on how children deal with relationships and society. For example, the extra security of a close father bond makes babies prone to cry when left with a stranger. And preschoolers appear to learn important social skills by playing a lot with Daddy, gaining greater empathy and other skills with playmates. Studies have shown that preschoolers who have warm relationships with their fathers are more likely to share. That means they tend to get along better with their peers.

Later, in school, such children are generally more successful in academic, athletic. and social pursuits and have higher self-esteem than kids with absent or uninvolved fathers. As adults, they are more likely to be tolerant, understanding, and socially or morally mature, growing up to have long-term, successful marriages and close friendships to sustain them. Absence of a father, on the other hand, is associated with higher rates of delinquency, teen pregnancy, and divorce.

All told, the role of a father is, where possible, to be an integral part of a team whose members have one goal but different styles of play. "Seeing different perspectives is a good thing for kids - it's wrongheaded to think, as some people have, that fathers need to be more like mothers," says Gadsen, of the National Center on Fathers and Families. "Both parents need to work with the strengths each of them brings to the family."

From the June 1998 issue of Parents Magazine (USA). Parents has a web page at http://www.parents.com.

Editorial office at : 375 Lexington Ave, NY, NY 10017 Phone 1-800-727-3682. We need to thank them for the positive coverage but also ask them to print something about the problems faced by divorced dads in upcoming issues. Here's a sample article from the June issue.

Thanks to Barry Masterton of Australia (barrymas@powerup.com.au) for this contribution.