Do Fathers Matter? Quotes

“Cooking brought huge nutritional benefits,” Wrangham writes. “But it also trapped women into a newly subservient role enforced by male-dominated culture … It is not a pretty picture.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“For a long time, until women began entering the workforce in bigger numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, fathers had a valuable—and often overlooked—role to play in the family. They brought home the paychecks that housed and fed their families and provided”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“Children born to dads over age thirty were found to be almost an inch taller, on average, than those born to fathers under thirty.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“The now-common practice by men and women to delay parenting until they are almost too old to become parents has led to numerous medical disasters. It has long been known that infertility is a problem when women delay parenting, as well as Down syndrome. Now we know children of men who delay parenting also can end up paying a medical price.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“researchers analyzed data on more than six thousand children in Hong Kong, where smoking is not confined to those in lower economic brackets and where most smokers are men. The children were assessed when they were seven years old and again when they were eleven. Those whose fathers smoked when the mothers were pregnant were more likely to be overweight or obese. It was the first evidence supporting the idea that childhood obesity could be affected by a mother’s exposure to her husband’s smoking while she was pregnant.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“Females that had never been pregnant took an average of 270 seconds to find and eat the cricket; lactating females did it in just over 50 seconds.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“Freud was not a scientist, although that’s the way he thought of himself.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“when parents have a strong alliance, children show fewer signs of stress, marital relationships are stronger, and children have better relationships with their peers.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“When dad is absent,” she explained, “it basically provides young girls with a cue about what the future holds in terms of the mating system they are born into.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“that children who had formed close attachments to their mothers before the age of two were more confident about exploring the world around them, while those who had not were more passive and more likely to cling to their mothers. Children who did not form such secure relationships were likely to suffer from separation anxiety for years to come.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“Fatherhood is about helping children become happy and healthy adults who are at ease in the world and prepared to become fathers or mothers themselves. We often say that doing what’s best for our kids is more important than anything else we do. What’s best for our kids should always include a role for fathers.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“Wrangham believes the cooking of food began during the time of Homo erectus, a human ancestor that lived between 1.6 million and 1.9 million years ago.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“A study published in the 1970s looked at cooking and other family activities in 185 different cultures. It found that women did the cooking in 98 percent of those societies. That’s not the kind of study that’s likely to be repeated, but there’s no reason to think there has been any substantial change in the decades since. Even in the rare communities in which women did not do all the cooking, men cooked only for the community; women still cooked household meals. And the authors found one small exception in some of the groups: men often liked to cook meat. (It seems that men who like to barbecue are not a modern invention or an American one but just the latest example of a widespread human practice.)”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

“Our failure to acknowledge fathers’ importance is now reflected in the shape of the American family. Fathers are disappearing. Fewer American fathers are participating in the lives of their children now than at any time since the United States began keeping records.”
― Paul Raeburn, Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked