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Eric Olofson prepares young men for the most difficult, rewarding, and transformative experience most of them will have in their entire lives.
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On a warm June afternoon in 2010, I stared at 42 empty cells in a grid I had drawn on the giant whiteboard in my office, and panicked. Each of those cells represented a class period in the new course on fatherhood I had promised I’d teach, and I had no idea how I would fill them. This course, which covers psychological research on the father-child relationship, has become one of the most popular courses at Wabash College, a (fantastic!) small liberal arts college for men in rural Indiana, but on that June day I wasn’t even sure that I could fill the schedule.
My doctoral training is on infants’ cognitive development, but as I became a father myself I started to think about the fact that most men come to fatherhood with only the vaguest sense of what to do. Most boys and young men don’t babysit or watch younger siblings as often as girls and young women. Many have never changed a diaper or dealt with an ornery toddler before they have to with their own child. Although many new mothers also feel unprepared, new fathers are, as a group, even less so. So I started thinking about what a college education should be, if not preparing young men for the most difficult, rewarding, and transformative experience most of them will have in their entire lives. The result was an introductory course on how fathers and children both fundamentally shape each other, which is, to my knowledge, the only college course of its kind. It’s certainly the only one taught every year by a father to a room full of 40 thoughtful young men, most of whom are looking forward to being fathers themselves.
Most boys and young men don’t babysit or watch younger siblings as often as girls and young women. Many have never changed a diaper or dealt with an ornery toddler before they have to with their own child.
When I tell people that I teach this course, the most common reaction I get is one of shock: shock that enough research on fathers exists to fill a course, shock that I was able to create the course just because I wanted to, and, most of all, shock that young men are so interested in being good fathers that the course fills up halfway through registration and 1 out of every 5 students graduate from Wabash having taken my course (and I have to turn even more away).
Quite a different picture of the average male college student that is depicted in the media, isn’t it?
And my students’ interest in being involved fathers isn’t atypical. Research shows that fathers in the US are more involved—and more excited to be involved—in their children’s lives than at any time since psychologists have been investigating them. Although it’s true that father absenteeism is a large and serious problem, it’s also true that fathers who are around are more invested in being good and involved dads than ever before.
That’s a loaded word, “good,” and many men grow up without any role model that would show them what “good” fathering is. In fact, researchers find that beyond the overly simplistic mantra to “just be there,” fathers aren’t very consistent in knowing what to do when they show up. How do you calm a screaming baby? Should you use baby talk with your children? Does roughhousing teach children how to fight and be aggressive? Is it important to be a disciplinarian, or to be supportive? Is it possible to be both?
These are all important questions, and fathers are increasingly likely to talk to other dads to get their perspectives and advice. Fortunately, researchers are also answering these questions to help us sort through which perspectives and advice are the best, and to connect fathers’ behaviors to children’s outcomes. Research shows, for example, that the rough-and-tumble play for which fathers are so well known is associated with lower physical aggression later in life. It also shows that this is probably because when fathers and children get all worked up playing together, fathers help children recognize when it’s time to calm down and then help them come down from that emotional high. This might not surprise a lot of fathers, but the research on how fathers should play with their kids might. In order for children to reap the benefits of physical play, fathers need to balance sensitivity to the child’s abilities and desires, following their lead in play, while simultaneously being the boss. It’s a fine line, and research is showing how fathers who walk that line have children who benefit.
In order for children to reap the benefits of physical play, fathers need to balance sensitivity to the child’s abilities and desires, following their lead in play, while simultaneously being the boss
This is just one small taste of a rapidly growing field. I still remember going to the main conference for developmental psychologists in 2009—which hosts several thousand researchers—and finding only a few studies specifically on fathers. When I returned to the same conference in 2015, there was so much information that they often scheduled multiple sessions at the same time. It was literally impossible to catch it all. I now struggle with the opposite problem as I did in June of 2010: I don’t have enough days in the semester to include all of the wonderful research that I want to teach! It’s a great problem to have.
With all of this positive change from fathers and the researchers who study them, it’s no wonder that a cultural shift seems to have begun. From the pro-father commercials during Super Bowl XLIX to Burt Hummel, the auto mechanic father on the TV show Glee who accepts his son’s sexuality with sympathy and love, the stereotype of the bumbling inept father is becoming a thing of the past. As these pro-father images become more frequent, we also seem to be expecting more from fathers than simply bringing home the bacon. And that is as it should be.
The great news is that with each passing year, more fathers are motivated to live up to this standard and more research is showing just how impactful it is when they do so.
This fall, I’ll be in a room with 40 young men eager to learn about it, and there is no place I’d rather be.
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Eric Olofson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Wabash College in Indiana. He and his wife, Carrie, have two daughters, Soren and Sadie. He is currently writing a book on the father-child relationship.
On Twitter @EricLOlofson
Illustration by Russell Christian.