Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

by Brigid Schulte

These dads are also spreading the word on once obscure research that has found that preschool children with more involved fathers show more cognitive competence, more self-control, more empathy, and less gender stereotyping than preschool children with less involved fathers. Adolescents with more involved fathers are more likely to have better self-esteem, self-control, social competence, and life skills—provided the father is not overly controlling or authoritarian.12 Surveys have found that girls are less confident than boys as early as in elementary school, and girls’ self-esteem continues to drop throughout high school. But spending time with a loving father, researchers are finding, is an important factor in keeping a girl from losing her self-esteem and confidence once she hits puberty.13