The involvement of fathers and mothers in the care of children is fundamental for their development, but it has different effects on them. In the case of parents, participation in parenting results in an educational advantage, in better school performance. At least that’s what research led by the University of Leeds (UK) says, which finds that children do better in primary school if male fathers regularly spend time with them in interactive activities such as reading, playing, drawing and sing
According to the report, children whose parents regularly drew, played and read with them when they were three years old did better in school at five years old. And engagement when they were five also helped them get better scores when assessed when they were seven.
The researchers used a representative sample of nearly 5,000 English mother-father households and found that father involvement had a positive impact on a child’s school performance regardless of gender, ethnicity, age or household income. But, in addition, they detected that the effects are different when the mother is the one who participates in the same activities. Whether mothers read, play, draw, sing or tell stories with their children has more of an impact on young children’s emotional and social behaviors than on school performance, say researchers, whose findings have surprised child development experts. David Bueno, PhD in Biology and expert in neuroeducation, says that “the study is very well done and shows that, when parents are involved, children get better grades on average than those whose parents are not involved , while those with only the mother involved score a little higher in socio-emotional aspects”.
However, he assures that the study does not provide evidence of the reason for the differences. He believes that the answer may lie in what researchers call “the control of variables”, aspects that cannot be quantified when working with thousands of people. “Perhaps the reason is in how the parents were educated or how they are relating to their children, because there are unconscious aspects in how we behave with them and perhaps they make the difference”, he comments.
Although he adds that there could also be a biological explanation. “Perhaps there is a hormonal effect: women, on average, produce more oxytocin (the socialization hormone) and men, more androgens, and it is transmitted through body odor even if we do not consciously perceive it, so it could be that this smell influences the structuring of the child’s brain in the relationship”, he suggests. In any case, he points out that both the explanation of cultural inertia and that of the hormonal effect are only hypotheses that would require other experiments. “The important thing is the discovery that the impact of the involvement of fathers and mothers can be different to take it into account and study it more if we want to move towards equality”, he emphasizes.
