When mothers perceived fathers to be competent caregivers, the more time those dads spent solo with children, the lower was mom's self-competence rating.

 

That's from this report on a soon-to-be-published study of parents and their attitudes toward each other's parenting styles (LiveScience, 3/18/10).  Conducted by Osaka University of Commerce researcher, Takayuki Sasaki and colleagues at the University of Texas, the study was an interview of employed parents with eight-month-old infants.

Interview questions measured two types of self-esteem – self-liking and self-competence (the degree to which individuals feel capable of and effective in accomplishing goals).

During home visits, parents were also asked to talk about their spouse's strengths and weaknesses. Coders then watched video recordings of the discussions and rated each participant's perceptions of his or her spouse's parenting, which included the spouse's emotional engagement (kissing and hugging the baby), physical involvement (such as feeding and diaper changing), responsibility and overall parenting skills. Total scores ranged from the worst score of 4 to the highest of 28.

Mothers cared for children alone about three times as much as did fathers alone, and for that dads gave them high parenting marks averaging 24.  Mothers generally approved of fathers' parenting too, although to a lesser degree.  Dads rate an average score of 21 from moms.

But, as we've seen in maternal gatekeeping, often mothers approved of fathers' parenting because it was like theirs.  When dads deviate from mothers' expectations, they tend to get criticized.  So,

"Many wives would say care-giving by their husbands is helpful but at the same time wives give their husbands negative feedback because their husbands' care-giving style is different from their own," Sasaki told LiveScience.

A bit ironically,

When mothers perceived fathers to be competent caregivers, the more time those dads spent solo with children, the lower was mom's self-competence rating.

So mothers want fathers to take part in childcare and want them to conform to their expectations, but when dads do that, and particularly when they do it a lot and well, mothers' self-esteem takes a hit.  In short, mothers tend to be ambivalent about paternal involvement with and care of children.  Though Sasaki doesn't seem to notice it, that surely plays a role in dads' lesser involvement in childcare.

But Sasaki places the blame squarely on cultural norms, saying,

"In American society, women are expected to take a main role in parenting despite increasingly egalitarian sex roles," Sasaki said. "Thus, we believe that employed mothers suffer from self-competence losses when their husbands are involved and skillful because those mothers may consider that it is a failure to fulfill cultural expectations."

But there's a lot more to it than cultural constructions, as Sasaki ought to know.  As I've pointed out before, the connection nature provides between parents and children of all mammal and most bird species is hormonal.  Specifically, females produce elevated levels of three principal hormones, cortisol, prolactin and oestradiol, during pregnancy.  Those have been shown to produce parenting behavior, even in adults without offspring.

The reason those hormones are required is that mammal and avian offspring require a lot of time to mature and socialize before they can take care of themselves.  Unlike reptiles, they need not only parents, but parenting.  So those hormones create the protective caregiving required for offspring to mature.

Adult mammals that don't have those hormonal spikes, like male African lions, exhibit no parental behavior toward offspring.  Those that do, do.  And parenting behavior reflects not only the presence of those hormones, but their serum levels as well.  As far as we know, the higher the levels, the greater involvement in parenting.

That's true irrespective of the sex of the parent.  In most species, the mother is the primary caretaker, but in certain New World monkeys, it's the dad who get's the, er, lion's share of the three hormones, and sure enough, he does most of the childcare.

In humans, mothers show higher levels of the three hormones during pregnancy and, not surprisingly, do most of the childcare.  Fathers who are present during their partner's pregnancy have increased levels of cortisol, prolactin and oestradiol, but not to the extent that mothers do.  Humans are a bi-parental species, with mothers being the primary caregivers.

So Sasaki's claim that parental roles are all about culture is wrong.  Culture of course is part of the story, but only part.

Still, the study is worthwhile.  It again points up the fact that, as much as we say we want gender equality in all things, that may not be entirely true.  Women want to be mothers and they tend to want that more than men want to be fathers.  There's nothing about gender equality that shouldn't allow individuals of both sexes the freedom to fulfill their own needs.  But right now both men and women find themselves in a whirl of mixed messages, with men's need to be providers competing with women in the workplace and women's need to care for children forcing men out of the nursery.

Thanks to Larry for the heads-up.

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