Warren Farrell answers

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I am Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Are the Way They Are and chair of a commission to create a White House Council on Boys and Men AMA!

Hi, I'm Warren Farrell. I've spent my life trying to get men and women to understand each other. ...

You say in The Myth of Male Power that children raised by single dads are better off than those raised by single moms.
Did the study that concluded this control for socioeconomic factors?

It was when i was doing the research for Father and Child Reunion that i did a meta-analysis of what i felt was much of the best research worldwide on what works best for children raised in a non-intact family. comparatively, yes, it is true children raised by single dads were better off than children raised by single moms on more than 30 different measures of success (psychological, such as lack of depression; social, such as empathy; physical health; academic). However, this does not mean that men are better as dads than women are as moms, since the men who are primary caretaker dads are on average older, have more education, more income and are more self-selected. They are the 2013 equivalent of the 1950's woman who overcame all the obstacles to become a dr. or lawyer--highly motivated and self-selected. When socioeconomic factors are controlled for, the children raised by dads do better still, but not as much better, and you still have the self-selection gap. Father and Child Reunion is filled with the hundreds of studies on which this is based. Check out ones by Christoffersen, and the ones by Sandufer from Harvard and many others.

important to remember is that the children who do best are ones in an intact family. especially when the mom and dad treat each of their contributions as necessary. moms tend to protect more; dads tend to encourage "get up and try again" some more. children need both the love and empathy and the encouragement to not give up. fortunately both genders can learn both skill sets if only they begin by valuing what the other sex tends to offer.