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Essay on The American Father
Without question, the relational dynamic experienced by men within the father-son dyad is a source of significant and long-lasting influence on a host of important psychosocial and developmental issues in the lives of men. For most men, the father-son relationship has an enormous influence on several developmental issues in nearly every area of their lives. For example, the father-son relationship reportedly is an important predictor of sons' future communication behaviors, their relational success and communication with their spouses, their attitudes toward sexuality, their academic achievement and educational attainment, their future in come levels, their parenting style, their potential for delinquent behavior, and their overall emotional health. For a father, the relationship experienced with his son influences the father's emotional health, adult development, and psychosocial adjustment.
Research has indicated that fathers who choose to be actively involved in the lives of their sons help to develop young men who are less aggressive, less overtly competitive, and more emotionally expressive and empathic. Further, fathers who play a direct role in parenting their sons help to raise individuals who subsequently are better able to resolve conflict, who are more caring and better able to share intimacy, and who appear to be more relaxed concerning gender role expectations of traditional masculinity. Others have focused on the positive outcomes associated with fathers taking an active role in raising their sons, such as the communication of affection, relational satisfaction, intimacy, and confirmation. Clearly, a growing body of research indicates that men who are actively involved in raising their sons can have an overwhelmingly positive impact on the life course their sons pursue.
An even larger body of literature has focused on what one might classify as the negative outcomes associated with poor, ineffective, or distant fathering behaviors, however. This body of work provides the foundation for the common assumption......
