By Richard P. Morin
The traditional American view of the family - Dad works while Mom stays at home to care for children playing on swing sets behind white picket fences - may be doing more harm than good, according to Brown sociologist Frances Goldscheider.
"The traditional definition of a man's role in the family is financial. So when the financing becomes more difficult, the men are opting out or being forced out," said Goldscheider, professor of sociology.
Research has shown that fathers who cannot financially support their families are not only leaving, but those remaining in the home often do not direct their energies into other areas of parenting, such as helping their children with homework or attending football games or other activities. "I think there is a causal effect," said Goldscheider, "that if you can't be truly defined in this society as a good father, i.e. someone who pays the bills, it is hard to even think about the next tier of priorities."
A comparison of three relatively wealthy countries - the United States, Sweden and Japan - shows that the United States has the highest number of children living in poverty among the three. "Japan does it the '50s way, with most of these kids living with their fathers. Sweden does it, in my view, the way we have to go to, which is to say the state and employers provide a combined set of income packages or support packages ... they have a package of income and service support that covers the expenses of children much better than we do," she said.
Because the Swedish government helps provide healthy environments in which children can be raised, the family dynamic in Sweden is somewhat different than in the United States. "The dads don't have to hang around, if they don't want to, and the children are still O.K.," said Goldscheider. "The United States of course has neither - Dad is not around and the state is not around. So we have left them [the children] out to dry."
Government assistance programs are structured in such a way that they may be harming children in the United States, according to Goldscheider. For example, if a single mother on government assistance is in a solid relationship with a man outside of marriage and that man interacts well with the children, it is virtually impossible for him to move into the household. "If he moves in, he is costing them a great amount - they will lose their government support," she said. "In Sweden, guys can hang around. They can establish relationships with these children" without worrying that their presence will affect the family's government support.
Sweden has a higher long-term cohabitation rate than the United States, said Goldscheider, who along with a Swedish colleague is in the midst of a comparative analysis of American and Swedish men who have entered into relationships with single mothers. "Cohabitation in Sweden is considered O.K.," she said. "It is much more legitimate and much less stigmatized."
There is very little in the way of literature in the United States concerning men who enter into relationships with women who already have children. "No one has a clue as to the factors that lead men to take on other people's children," she said.
In the United States, men who care for children who are not their own have little if any rights to those children, which Goldscheider not only considers ludicrous, but potentially harmful to the children. "Rights only seem to go through the biological father," she said. If a child has to be brought to the hospital by the man living in the house, and the man is not the biological father, he cannot sign for them. "That is crazy," Goldscheider said.
Goldscheider believes her present area of inquiry will yield important results for the American family. The United States is doing everything it can to stigmatize men who live with women and help raise children who aren't their own, Goldscheider said. "If it takes a community to raise a child," Goldscheider said, she hopes the United States will see its way to accept two men - biological fathers and other men - as part of that community.