Are dads (and men) redundant? The increasing trend towards single motherhood (single fathers head only a tiny fraction of families) and best-selling books like Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men would have you believe so.

Common sense says different of course. For a start, it should be obvious that when it comes to something as tricky as parenting, two is better than one, men are different from women and mothers are different from fathers.

But there is huge ideological resistance to these propositions. Equality dogma insists that not only are men and women equal, they are the same. (Question; does that make women, as women, redundant as well?)

In any event, as Dr. W Bradford Wilcox points out in this article, there is a growing body of social science research to demonstrate that dads do indeed matter.

A new book, co-edited by Dr Wilcox, called ‘Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives’, examines how mothers and fathers differ in their parenting styles.

He says that there are at least four ways that fathers make a difference to their children. Firstly, fathers have a different way of playing with their children. This tends to be more physical, Wilcox points out and is “characterised by arousal, excitement, and unpredictability”.

Fathers, Wilcox writes “typically spend more of their time engaged in vigorous play than do mothers, and play a uniquely physical role in teaching their sons and daughters how to handle their bodies and their emotions”.

He quotes psychologist John Snarey who says that “children who roughhouse with their fathers… quickly learn that biting, kicking, and other forms of physical violence are not acceptable”.

Fathers are also important in that they are more likely to encourage their children “to take risks, embrace challenges, and be independent”, while mothers, Wilcox says “are more likely to focus on their children’s safety and emotional well-being”.

Fathers, he adds “are more likely to have their children talk to strangers, to overcome obstacles, and even to have their toddlers put out into the deep during swim lessons”.

Fathers also play a crucial role in protecting their children from threats in the larger environment, Wilcox says.

Fathers who are engaged in their children’s lives “can better monitor their children’s comings and goings, as well as the peers and adults in their children’s lives, compared to disengaged or absent fathers”.

Because of their “size, strength, or aggressive public presence”, fathers “appear to be more successful in keeping predators and bad peer influences away from their sons and daughters”.

On top of this, fathers have a distinctive disciplinary style, Wilcox argues. Fathers “tend to be firmer with their children, compared to mothers”.

Fathers, he says, tend to be more willing than mothers to confront their children and enforce discipline, leaving their children with the impression that they in fact have more authority. 

These differences, Wilcox argues make a crucial contribution to children’s lives in three areas: “teenage delinquency, pregnancy, and depression”.

He says that boys who enjoy average and especially high-quality relationships with their fathers in an intact family are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior, while teenage girls living with their father in an intact family and enjoying at least an average-quality relationship with him are “half as likely to become pregnant as teenagers, compared to girls living with a single mother, or who only have a low-quality relationship with their father in an intact family”.

Finally, a high-quality relationship with dad is associated with less depression, Wilcox says.

In other words, fathers matter, not that you’d know to listen to our politicians or popular culture. Common sense, it turns out, isn’t so common.