WTF are you even on about? I didn't say that or anything remotely like that. There are cultures where men are just as much primary nurturers as mothers - but clearly don't breastfeed them. That doesn't mean they don't spend just as much time caring for, nurturing, and playing with their children. And in case you didn’t know, a lot of modern mothers don’t breastfeed anyhow.
And no, the overwhelming data does not link fatherlessness to problems - as already noted by the experts I cited (and many more that I could cite) - it's the fact that missing fathers often means dire economic straits - and THAT is the thing that leads to problems. Correlation is not causation and old studies that believed that were bad science clouded by patriarchal sensibilities. In fact, the worst outcomes for children is actually when they live with a two parent household with a contentious relationship between mother and father.
Another expert on fatherhood, sociologist Tim Biblarz of the University of Southern California-Los Angeles, says the evidence shows economics plays a significant role in the risk for negative outcomes, such as poorer grades and lower educational attainment, substance abuse or poor social adjustment.
“Those who grow up with single mothers with adequate socioeconomic resources tend to do well. The children of poor single mothers are more at risk,” Biblarz says. “Many of the results that say that kids are at increased risk for negative outcomes have to do with economics.”
“What’s important is not whether they are raised by one or two parents. It’s how good is the relationship with the parent, how much support they’re getting from that parent and how harmonious is the environment.
Fathers are important just as mothers are - but no parent is necessary. It is entirely possible to be a well adjusted and highly functional person if one of your parents dies, or leaves, or if you have homosexual parents (whose children actually have THE highest rates of good school outcomes and being well-adjusted.)
“Children of same-sex couples perform better in school than kids raised by a mom and a dad, according to new research from several European economists.
George Washington's father died when he was a child, so did Bill Clinton's. Barack Obama didn't have a very supportive relationship with either parent, but he had grandparents who provided love and stability. Studies indicate that as long as a child has three or more adults they can really count on, it doesn't matter who those people are.
Overall, children seemed to do best when they have three secure relationships — that is, three relationships that send the clear message “You will be cared for no matter what.” Such findings led van IJzendoorn and Sagi to conclude that “the most powerful predictor of later socioemotional development involves the quality of the entire attachment network.” They termed this their “integration model.”
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mothers and Others (p. 130). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
Current research indicates that working mothers do not harm children and in fact, it can be beneficial for many children.
"The good news: Overall, maternal employment seems to have a limited impact on children’s behavior and academic achievement over the short term. And there appear to be benefits in the long-term. A study published in 2018 finds that daughters raised by working moms are more likely to be employed as adults and have higher incomes."
"Maternal employment, generally speaking, appears to have a positive effect on children’s cognitive development. “When comparing the effect of maternal employment on child outcomes between stay-at-home mothers and mothers who work full-time, we see that the reduction in unstructured time resulting from full-time employment amounts to an improvement in children’s cognitive development of 0.03 to 0.04 SD [standard deviation],” the authors write. For children under age 6, the improvement is larger."
"Evidence is mounting that having a working mother has some economic, educational, and social benefits for children of both sexes."
Passing along cultural narratives that have no basis in modern science doesn't make you look intelligent or like you care about children. It just makes you look patriarchal. Parenting is a noble and very difficult vocation - pretending that it's primarily a mother's role is antiquated and unsupported by either history or current research.
