Looks like fathers who are more than mere sperm donors really do make a difference in the lives of children, particularly boys:
Are dads dispensable? A lot of scholars and writers weighing in on fatherhood these days have come to the conclusion that they are. As Jennifer Aniston, for example, once put the point in the high-profile context of a press conference: "Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don't have to
settle with a man just to have that child." Her perspective has a lot of intuitive appeal in an era where millions of women have children outside of marriage, serve as breadwinner moms to their families, or are raising children on their own. Dads certainly seem dispensable in today's world.
What this view overlooks, however, is a growing body of research suggesting that men bring much more to the parenting enterprise than money, especially today, when many fathers are highly involved in the warp and woof of childrearing. As Yale psychiatrist Kyle Pruett put it in Salon: "fathers don't mother."
Pruett's argument is that fathers often engage their children in ways that differ from the ways in which mothers engage their children. Yes, there are exceptions, and, yes, parents also engage their children in ways that are not specifically gendered. But there are at least four ways, spelled out in my new book, Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (co-edited with Kathleen Kovner Kline), that today's dads tend to make distinctive contributions to their children's lives...
Read the rest.
It's good to see that which buttresses God's design for the family. Not so good for those who by their own designs desire to diminish the importance a father plays in child rearing.
And in case anyone is wondering... a pantsuit mommy, in my less than humble view, is a mommy who believes her child is better off without a father, period. A single mother doing her best to raise a child in less than ideal circumstances that includes an absent father is not a pantsuit mommy.
H/T to Instapundit for the find.