Families and communities

While the role of mothers is often emphasised in discussions of child development, fathers are usually considered only in the context of the role of parents. Recent research suggests, however, that more recognition could be given to fathers' share in parental responsibility and to its significance to school attainment and social adjustment.

In 1951, the World Health Organisation published a report by John Bowlby entitled Maternal Care and Mental Health. In that report Bowlby reviewed a variety of research studies concerning children in institutions such as orphanages and foundling homes, and he assessed the effect of these circumstances on the children's subsequent development. He came to the conclusion that the children who were the subjects of the various studies had suffered severely in their development, and that this was due, in the main, to the fact that they had been deprived of mothering.

Family day-care (child-minding in private homes) is probably the most widespread form of day-care in New Zealand and it is possibly the one which has been with us the longest. It is not subject to official supervision (unless more than two children are being looked after) so nobody has really known how many children were being cared for in this way, for how long during the day, under what conditions or at what financial cost. Nor have we known why women choose to become child-minders.

Of course fathers are important - aren't they? Fathers have always been important. Fathers provide for their families. Fathers supervise, discipline and train. Fathers teach children skills and how to survive in a harsh external world. Fathers, as Talcott Parsons said, play the instrumental role in a family leaving mothers the luxury of expressiveness.