A strong and healthy family helps children feel safe and secure. Families that provide warmth and predictability, encourage communication, and have strong connections to others outside the family, offer a healthy environment to children.
Importance of Fathers in raising a child
Over the last few decades, father’s involvement in the raising of a child has increased dramatically. They are no longer just a bread-winner but have now truly evolved into equal co-parents. There are several studies that highlight the importance of dads in a child’s overall development.
Dads involvement have a huger impact on a child’s future.
Involved fatherhood plays in important role in cognitive development, educational achievement, self-esteem and pro-social behavior.
Children who grow up with involved fathers are:
- More likley to do well in school
- More likely to go to college and find stable employment after finishing studies
- Less likely to spend time in jail
Families stay strong by supportive fathers.
Children benefit from a father’s positive parenting skills, appropriate discipline, effective communication, emotional support, and stress management, which reduces risks of child abuse and increases protective factors.
Favourable policies to support fatherhood on the rise.
Policies that support fathers are on the rise; initiatives targeting dads in the form of government initiatives, professional and practitioner networks, and nonprofit and community collaborations are on the rise.
Dads appreciate being involved and find immense value from their participation.
Fathers love being involved parents. Many fathers share that they have become better communicators (after becoming fathers), feel more relaxed and happy, and have an increased sense of confidence and efficacy as a father because of their participation.
Parents’ nasty divorce can affect kids’ health adversely for decades (study)
We all know that divorces are bad for kids mentally, however not much was known about how the split impacted the kids physically.
In a recent study, healthy adults were exposed to a virus that causes the common cold, and monitored for five days. Those whose parents had separated and had not spoken to each other for years were three times as likely to get sick, compared to those whose parents had separated but had stayed in touch as the children grew. Research reveals that adults whose parents separated during childhood have an increased risk for poorer health.
“Early life stressful experiences do something to our physiology and inflammatory processes that increase risk for poorer health and chronic illness. This work is a step forward in our understanding of how family stress during childhood may influence a child’s susceptibility to disease 20-40 years later,” said Michael Murphy, a psychology postdoctoral research associate at Carnegie Mellon University.
The study also suggests that all divorces are not equal. Adult children of parents who had separated but stayed in touch were no more likely to get sick than the adult children of intact families. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
Leave a Reply