The secret of being a good father

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Still, it shows just how dramatically the wider view of being a “good father” has changed over time.

Today, many dads are celebrated for being sensitive, caring and hands-on. A growing body of research is transforming our understanding of how they can shape their children’s lives from the start, challenging conventional ideas of parenthood and gender.

This is striking given that until the 1970s, the role of fathers in their children’s development was not much studied at all. Their most important job was seen as economically supporting the mother, who would in turn be the emotional anchor for the child.

Fouad Kuyali reads to his children Mazen and Julie in their home in Dubai, where he moved from Aleppo, Syria (Credit: Gabriele Galimberti/INSTITUTE)

“There was a lot of focus on how relationships with mothers were very important, and there was very little thought about other social relationships,” says Michael Lamb, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge who has been studying fathers since the 1970s. “The most obvious of those was the father-child relationship — a relationship that was viewed as more important as children grow older, but was always viewed as secondary to the mother-child relationship.”

Now, new research is showing that the social world of children is much richer, and more complex, than previously thought.

It is not just dads who have moved into the spotlight. Grandparents, same-sex parents, step-parents and single parents have also helped researchers understand what really makes a child thrive — and that it’s not just about one caregiver.

“Part of the argument that I’ve been trying to make for the past 45 years is that actually, no, there are multiple important factors,” says Lamb. “We do want to recognise differences in their importance, but we also need to recognise that — to quote that cliché — it does take a village, and that there are a lot of important relationships that shape children’s development.”

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