Title: The Importance of Fathers | Psychology Today
Headings: The Importance of Fathers
Ditta M. Oliker Ph.D.
The Importance of Fathers
Is Father's Day real?

Content: The world began to radically change with the social, economic and technical advances of the 20th century, and with those changes came a basic change in the structure and function of the family — with a consequent shift in the authority of the father. His influence was increasingly seen as minor, even negligible, and his importance was defined by how well he provided for the family. Another factor in the diminished role of the father was the then-new field of psychology. In fact, psychology became part of the problem. Research studies did not place much importance on the role of the father, and his influence on the development and growth of his child was reported as "insignificant." The term "parent" was often meant as mother — and father, if mentioned, was equivalent to other influences. Only a small number of parent-child studies investigated the father's role, and the few studies that were done at that time focused on the father's involvement as reported by the mother. For example, in a number of studies that used over 2,000 parents who responded to questions about parenting, not one father was interviewed. An indirect result of the lack of research data on fathers was the implied assumption that they weren't interested in fathering. The pendulum of the father's influence swung so far that the verse would have read: