The involvement of fathers and mothers in caring for their children is essential for their development but has different effects on it. In the case of fathers, this participation in parenting translates into an educational advantage, in better school performance. At least that is what research led by the University of Leeds (United Kingdom) confirms, which has found that children do better in primary school if their male parents regularly spend time with them in interactive activities such as reading, playing, tell stories, draw and sing.
According to the research, children whose fathers regularly drew, played and read with them when they were three years old did better in school at five years old. And the involvement of parents when they were five years old also helped them obtain better scores in the curricular evaluations that are carried out when they reach the age of seven.
To analyze the results on the first school assessment tests of five- and seven-year-old children, the researchers used a representative sample of almost 5,000 English single-parent households from the Millennium Cohort Study, which collected data on children born between 2000 and 2002 as they grew.
And they observed that parental involvement in parenting had a positive impact on children’s school performance regardless of their gender, ethnicity, age, or household income level. But they also detected that the effects are different when it is the mother who participates in those same activities.
According to the data from this study, mothers reading, playing, drawing, singing or telling stories with their children has more impact on the emotional and social behaviors of young children than on their school performance, results that have surprised experts. in child development and that raise controversy about the role that both parents play or have to play in parenting.
David Bueno, doctor in biology and one of the great experts in neuroeducation, assures that “the study from the University of Leeds is very well done and shows that when parents are involved in parenting, children get better academic grades, on average, than those whose fathers are not involved, while those whose mother is only involved in their upbringing score a little higher in socio-emotional aspects.
However, he assures that the study does not offer scientific evidence regarding the reason for these differences depending on the sex of the parent. He points out that the answer may lie in what research calls the control of variables, those aspects that cannot be quantified when working with thousands of people.
“Perhaps the answer lies in how the education of those fathers and mothers in the study was, or in how they are relating to their sons and daughters, because there are unconscious aspects that we cannot control in how we behave with our children, and that perhaps make a difference; for example, there has been research that has shown that we treat sons and daughters differently without realizing it, that boys are encouraged to be daring and brave and girls to be calmer and more modest due to social inertia, without being aware of it,” comments the co-director of the UB-EDU1st Neuroeducation chair.
Although he adds that there could also be a biological explanation for the differentiated effects of paternal or maternal participation in the same activities. “Perhaps there is a hormonal effect; women, on average, produce more oxytocin (which is the socialization hormone) and men more testosterone and other androgens, and this is transmitted through body odor although we do not consciously perceive it, so So it could be, as a hypothesis, that that smell is influencing how the child’s brain is structured in that relationship,” he suggests.
In any case, Bueno emphasizes that both the explanation of a cultural transmission and that of the hormonal effect are, today, mere hypotheses that would require new experiments to be carried out with these families. “The important thing is the discovery itself that the impact of the involvement of fathers and mothers in parenting can be different to take into account and study it more if we want to move towards equality,” he emphasizes.
The authors of the research, led by Helen Norman, from the University of Leeds Business School, assure that mothers still tend to assume the role of primary caregivers for their children and to be the ones who dedicate the most time to them but that, Given the results of their work, it is important to encourage and support parents to share that care from an early stage in the child’s life.
“Our analysis has shown that fathers have an important, direct and lasting impact on their children’s learning; we should recognize this and find active ways to support fathers in fulfilling their role as fathers rather than engaging only with mothers. or take a gender-neutral approach, said study co-author Jeremy Davis, a researcher at the University of Manchester, during the report’s public launch last week.
