Study reveals bias against fathers

Focus on the Family

January 9, 2008

Dads may be participating more than ever with moms in helping raise their children, but they are still not included in most studies of children and their families, Dalhousie University doctoral student Erin Moon has concluded.

“The research has not kept up with the changes in society, with fathers being more and more involved in children’s lives,” Moon, a clinical psychologist, told CanWest News Service. “Almost all the previous research has been conducted with mothers.”

Moon is researching the parental response to a child’s pain, specifically if fathers react differently based on whether a son or a daughter is suffering. She discovered that the questionnaires and tests previous researchers conducted all excluded the responses of fathers, presumably because it was thought that mothers were the primary caregivers….(Full Story)

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Comments:

The full article is well worth reading, as it uncovers much of the silence in Academe regarding the vital involvement of fathers in being part of the parenting that children receive. Yet, many or even most of the sentiments expressed in the article bring to light not much more than that fathers are parents, too, parents that are almost as good as mothers. In other words, “mothering” is an important thing, and fathers are almost as good at it as mothers are.

The reality is that the proportions of parenting done by fathers and mothers are equally important but different. They augment one another, and their combined effect becomes in the system of parenting in the traditional nuclear family greater than the sum of the parts contributed individually by mothers and fathers. The principle of synergy comes into play. That is far more prevalent in families in a general sense than it is within the narrow focus of the study done by Erin Moon, namely the comparable reactions of fathers and mothers to their children’s pain.

Two articles address the benefits of parenting by fathers and mothers within the family in a much wider sense.

1. Shacking UP and Breaking DOWN
   Common-law marriage and break-up are booming, and so is a host of related social ills. By Candis Mclean (Alberta Report, June 22, 1998, page 28)

   The Alberta Report is no longer being published, but a condensed version of the article is available at the website of Fathers for Life.The AR article concludes with a quote by columnist Charles Moore from an article in the Western Catholic Reporter:

   “Marriage is more than a private relationship between two individuals. The reason it has traditionally benefited from positive discrimination [special benefits, subsidies and rights] is recognition of the contribution to the common good by stable family units — specifically, the procreation and healthy upbringing of children….All other domestic arrangements — heterosexual or homosexual — must be deemed purely private relationships that society has no interest in subsidizing. It may take a political or even constitutional revolution to accomplish this, but the alternative is continued disintegration of our civilization.”

2. The sorry facts behind common-law marriage
   By Lorne Gunter, Edmonton Journal, 28.6.98 (that article is available in the same web page at the website of Fathers for Life)

But there is more yet behind the invisibility of fathers as far as the perspective of social researchers goes. For all intents and purposes, social research is a feminist-dominated and -controlled academic field in which it is not politically correct to illuminate the role of fathers in families or, for that matter, the constructive role of men in society. The invisibility of fathers and men in feminist social studies is not accidental, it is deliberate.

Feminist social “research” is advocacy research and does not live up to the standards against which respectable and reputable scientific inquiries must measure up to become objectively acceptable.
Advocacy research does not stand up to scientific standards, although many people make a good living doing it. Advocacy research could more accurately be called science fiction on account of collecting or manufacturing data that support a hypothesis, discarding or altering those data that do not support or do contradict the hypothesis the advocacy researchers set out to prove and then presenting its conclusions disguised in the cloak of science. Feminist “research” is almost entirely comprised of advocacy research.

Advocacy research uses selective study samples that are likely to produce the desired results. It does not use randomly selected study samples, as those are far more likely to produce objective answers that are contrary to the point the advocacy researcher wishes to promote. There is no objectivity in the reporting done by advocacy research. Without exception, advocacy research is seriously flawed.

This entry was posted on January 10, 2008 at 7:02 am and is filed under Censorship, Health, Family, Feminism, Propaganda Exposed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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