I seem to recall that literature indicates that the greatest predictor of how much fathers are involved with raising children is how much the mother allows the father to be involved. Essentially, it takes 2 to parent a child, and it particularly takes 2 to have an active and involved father for the child.
I suspect that the opposite doesn't happen so often -- mothers aren't usually distanced from their kids by the father, particularly in intact households.
Our biology primes us differently, so while there's no right or wrong answer men and women tend towards certain roles and those roles have a substantial impact on how they tend to interact with our offspring.
The biggest challenge is trying as a society to balance the reality that not every family is the same so you shouldn't automatically assume every story is the same one and base your rules and rulings on that (and I'd argue we absolutely have), but at the same time you shouldn't disregard fundamental truths that often apply to the world just because they're inconvenient, such as the typical relationships between kids and their mother and the same kids and their father.
I guess the key is we should try to see reality as it is and not as stereotypes or disregarding stereotypes would have us see it. Good dads ought to be treated well, good moms ought to be treated well, shitty dads ought to be treated badly, and shitty moms ought to be treated badly.
I suspect that the opposite doesn't happen so often -- mothers aren't usually distanced from their kids by the father, particularly in intact households.
Our biology primes us differently, so while there's no right or wrong answer men and women tend towards certain roles and those roles have a substantial impact on how they tend to interact with our offspring.
The biggest challenge is trying as a society to balance the reality that not every family is the same so you shouldn't automatically assume every story is the same one and base your rules and rulings on that (and I'd argue we absolutely have), but at the same time you shouldn't disregard fundamental truths that often apply to the world just because they're inconvenient, such as the typical relationships between kids and their mother and the same kids and their father.
I guess the key is we should try to see reality as it is and not as stereotypes or disregarding stereotypes would have us see it. Good dads ought to be treated well, good moms ought to be treated well, shitty dads ought to be treated badly, and shitty moms ought to be treated badly.
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