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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

"I think we need to take a much more nonjudgmental view of the human family, and the kinds of family structures in which children can thrive"

A strange conclusion. After spending the rest of the article describing ways in which dads matter, why would the article pivot to essentially say all methods are equal?

Different circumstances create different pressures and evolve different behaviors. Choosing and socially encouraging the best ones is important. Isn't that being judgemental?

Sure, there's room for variety. But, as a society, you should be somewhat choosey.

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Yes, the "anything is as good as another" attitude is not born out by the data.

Even when controlling for other factors (e.g. poverty), fatherless children are more likely to have teenage pregnancies, commit crimes, and drop out of high school.

Yes, single mothers are loving and contagious.

But let's not pretend for political correctness points that everything is equal.

The studies they're quoting support the thesis that fathers aren't strictly necessary for child survival, only the role they perform is. So from the child survival point of view, a culture or society that does not have doting fathers but enough community support to fill those roles is just as beneficial as one that has doting fathers. Either way works, from a child survival p.o.v.

There may be other factors that we as a society consider beneficial that we wish to promote, that need present and involved fathers, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean a non-involved father is bad for the survival of the child. We currently based societal mores on more than just survival, though, and that is a sign of progress.

When reading the article, I was surprised to not see the other studies mentioned alongside the strict survival results. In developed/industrialized countries, the number of years a child has an involved father predicts their future income, even after controlling for education level, total family income, etc. Of course, these are in environments where survival is not exactly a close call.

Edit to add: I don't know if the results were able to be replicated in non-WEIRD societies.

What exactly are “non-WEIRD” societies?

WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

A lot of the article was about how human behavior varies based on culture, including the role of the father. It also talks about studies where children without fathers had the same survival rates as those with fathers, and speculates that the father role might be fillable by other members of society. So that conclusion was not totally out of the blue.

Diversity between and within soceties is fine. But societies need to pass some judgement to get a healthy diversity of roles rather than unhealthy negligence.

It seems kind of dumb, of course the role can be replaced. Its not like a father today is doing anything super specific to child survival. Just feed, change and play with the kid, obviously anyone of any sex can do these things.

If this is what society considers the roles of a father to be, then to goes a long way to explain so many of the challenges people face today.

I certainly don't see my role with my children as just a babysitter. The partnership with my wife to raise our family is a complex and rich engagement between our strengths and weaknesses to aid in our kids development, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally among other aspects.

Survival is sort of not the point though? We want people to thrive not just live. People with male role models do better in school, less likely to commit crime, take risks, live longer and are happier.

And raise similarly successful offspring.

> Its not like a father today is doing anything super specific to child survival.

Actually, different people have different strengths.

I don't think this research can come to any conclusion, we don't judge our parenting ways by how some animals or even some tribes in Africa are doing it. For us it is more relevant to judge it based on how good it is for our times and place. In my eyes it is very clear that fatherhood is important but that just by looking at what happens in societies with low rate of fatherhood, not because of this research.

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