How important are fathers to children?

Kids need to find that special relationship that gives them firmness and affection. But boys and girls seem to find it in different ways. "Daddy, don't go to work', one of my daughters used to say. "Stay here with me!" Generally, our sons are not so confident.

Garrison Keillor, the American humourist, says

A father turns a stony face to his sons...But when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says 'Daddy, I want to ask you something', he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

Boys need fathers more than girls, according to research by the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare. It suggests that boys in single-parent families are twice as likely to to be disabled and handicapped and 3 times more likely to have a severe handicap as boys in two-parent families. The research emphatically states that boys - but not girls- in single parent families have significantly more serious chronic illness than children in two-parent families. And it says that around 90% of single parents are mothers.

Two young men growing up in Western Sydney show some of the difference a father makes. Dean is from Penrith, near the foot of the Blue Mountains. George is from nearby Blacktown. They are best mates. They are two of the boys whom I am studying as part of the Boys and Sport Project. I have been tracking these boys since the age of 14; they are now 17. Dean has no father in the home, and so he is the oldest male. George is the youngest in a large family.

Dean was born in Penrith. He has stayed there apart from visits to see friends and relatives. He lives with his mother, Nina, and two younger brothers. At 14, he talked about his father:

Dean said he had to look after his brothers when his mother went out to work:

I asked a routine question and the 14 year old responded like a machine gun. He seemed afraid the conversation might get away. And he wanted to stay in control- it's a basic masculine quality. I had touched a sore part of him. Perhaps Dean wanted to unburden himself to me. And yet he was afraid he might burst out in tears or anger - an emotion he said he didn't want to let me see. My guess is that his anger was directed at the father who had deserted him at birth. His words proclaim that he doesn't care; but the emotion threatens to burst out and betray him as the 14 year old talked about becoming a man and what he had to do :

Once again, there's that awareness that the absent father has left a hole which Dean and others has to fill. Like most other kids, Dean wants to break out and muck up sometimes. But he can't act up because his mother depends on him so much to do household chores and mind the younger brothers.

Dean said he would like to have kids of his own, grinning with pleasure at the thought. He went on

Dean did find father-substitutes. He said he looked up to an uncle who was a carpenter. He also got some fathering from a sports teacher who liked his knockabout quality. 'Dean's a real character', he had said. This teacher had managed to get him into a football team when he had been rejected by the local junior team.

But Dean found masculine company in another way, too. His best friend was George. The two used to spend many weekends together. Dean would often go to stay over at George's house in Blacktown. There are five kids in this family and four boys. It's a footy family - even his sister played touch, George said. And they would all go and watch each other play. When his mother went away for a wedding in northern Australia, Dean spent the week at George's house.

Already at 14, Dean planned on playing football and being a carpenter. He saw his life as revolving around the people he knew. This meant, first, his mother, someone who was a central figure in his life. He said he got angry 'if I have an argument with mum' and he had to go into his room to listen to music - or sometimes, to cry. Again, there's that tension in the relationship because mum 'is sort of both' mother and father; it's a heavy load that both of them have to carry because there's no third person to share it. Second, there was his best mate, George. Third, there were uncles in his large extended family. And already there was a girlfriend, but he said there's 'nothing serious' there.

How did Dean compare with George?

At 14 GEORGE was a big boy. He seemed older than his years, and in football he had 'played a year above meself'. I saw teachers speaking to him in friendly and familiar ways. He had won trophies for best player and best team. He wore a blazer proclaiming him State Champion to anyone who cared to look. He sat back and chatted to me confidently. He weighed 74 kilos - a considerable weight for a boy of 14. He knew what he could do on squats and bench press. This boy was in many ways a confident young man.

George said he and Dean had had a fight over a girl.

Dean might have had some resentment against George, even though he was a mate. George had a family life he can only dream of. But any two kids this age would have some full-on fights. George didn't seem too upset about it.

When I asked George about his plans for life, his father was the one he mentioned most often.

I asked what he liked at school. One of his likes was woodwork, because

George also had fun with Dad:

Dean said he went down to this house, though George doesn't say so. Maybe Dean needed George more than George needs him. I would guess that a boy like George might find it fairly easy to make friends. George got affection friom teachers, friends and of course his large family.

George is the baby of the family, and at 14 he saw Dad a good deal. George says he measures himself against the others in the family, especially his brothers:

The subdued note of anxiety here suggests that George, too, had his times when he worried about whether he would grow as big as his brothers. However, George seemed to fit in well into this large family. They had robust arguments, he says, and ended up scuffling on the floor. This was a rich family life in which George got lots of attention. And there was room for his friends, including Dean.

TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER, I went to meet the boys again at Dean's home on a housing estate near Penrith.

GEORGE seems to have filled out. Perhaps he is a bit taller. He says:

George works with his father now in a hardware business. . Dad runs it from home, and gets George up every morning. Then they decide how they will spend the day.

He dreams of being a first-grade football player, but says he'll be happy to have a good job and play on the weekend.

He's been playing a year above himself for the last few years. Finally, he can play with his own age group. The club gives him $8,000 over three years as well as bonuses. If the club moves. he has to move too.

'Then there'll be big tears', says Dean. He covers his face in a mockery of crying. I think there will be some sadness. I feel Dean would miss George more than vice versa. I doubt that Dean could think about moving out of home as coolly as George does.

"Dean's still a good bloke", says George, "The best bloke I know".

I can scarcely recognise DEAN. The little 14 year old is almost six feet tall and weighs 78 kilos. Nina, his mother, says women admire his body when they go swimming. He says -

We are told that men confer masculinity on a boy; women confirm it. He seems to want approval from females, and from men like me.

Dean had left his former school. He explained -

Dean brushes aside any idea of getting into strife, and doesn't emphasise his troubles. When he's out of the room, Nina tells a different story. Another boy had taken Dean's lunch and eaten it. Dean and the boy were scuffling in the playground and were taken inside by a teacher. They read Dean an ultimatum: either he do some community work on a Sunday, or he had to leave the school. Dean said he had to play football on Sunday, so he left. Dean has a strong sense of justice, says Nina, and he hates to see anything that's not fair. He felt it wasn't fair for him to be punished for protecting his property. He strolls over to the fridge and talks as he does :

I don't have any heroes. Maybe I wanna be like George. (They both laugh at this).

George says: "I tease him and he goes wild'.

Dean responds:

Do boys like Dean miss their fathers? If they read the current literature on families, they would think they weren't missing out on anything. Hugh Mackay's book Reinventing Australia features on its cover a woman at an automatic teller machine and a woman on a beach with a boy and girl. Men are nowhere to be seen.

These images summarise the way we see families in Australia. Fathers or other male parents are covered under general discussion of 'parents'. Any discussion of fathers tends to suggest that men should do more around the house, or do more for children. The Institute of Family Studies' journal Family Matters is a journal written mainly by women, about what interests women, though there has been an occasional piece about fathering. Dr Jill Boyd, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Western Sydney Nepean, says that teaching and research about families minimises the contribution of fathers.

But Don Edgar and Helen Glezer suggest that

We have neglected half the potential for positive child-development because we down-play the role of men... There is a stronger correlation with fathers' interaction [with children] than with mothers'.

David Blankenhorn's book Fatherless America complains that fathers are seen as the junior partners in raising children. One man agreed - 'My wife drives the train and she lets me blow the whistle now and then'. But it's no use bewailing men's absence from families if we keep minimising their role. We can best see this in their absence.

Dean takes charge, says Nina - and people keep telling her he's the man of the house:

"He'll put his arms around me and keep me close", says Steve, a younger brother. "He bought me a bike and lots of stuff."

Perhaps he tries to be the father the other boys don't have. But Nina knows the depths that Dean experiences - better than he does himself, perhaps. She says Dean was nearly suicidal when he fought with one of his bosses. He responds

In this - as in so many other things - Dean sounds like a man. With a job as an apprentice carpenter, he is in many ways a man.

'We gotta go now' Dean says. And they're off to see some girls.

Dads were not always seen as disposable. In earlier times, fathers took the major role in the family in western societies, John Gillis wrote in the journal masculinities. 'From coitus onwards, it was the father who was regarded as shaping the child, the natural parent as it were'.

In Fathers, Sons and Lovers I asked men and women from the Thirties about the role of fathers. Kevin said 'We all looked up to our dads. We modelled our lives on Mum and Dad.' Chris said matter-of factly- 'He beat me when I played up. With the cord on the iron. But I still loved him - desperately.'

In the Thirties, men worked, women stayed at home. And when I asked kids, they said 'girls worked inside; boys worked outside'.

Dean thinks a man's role hasn't changed - 'In the olden days work was a man's job. Now women say they want women's rights. But a man still has to earn money. I'm a man'.

'He thinks he's a man', says George, laughing.

'Well I'm turning into a man'.

Any term seems inappropriate when I look at these strong young men. They are past boyhood. George has his driver's licence and Dean hopes to get his in a couple of months. Having sex, getting a driver's licence, having a full-time job: these are the modern rites of passage that turn a boy into a man. But it's easier for some than for others.

Dean and George show some of the signs of the families they are in. "If I've got a problem I can go to anyone", says George. He names brothers, a mother, a sister, a coach and former coaches - as well as his father. Dean is more of a loner. Perhaps this is why George seems more contented with his lot.

For the two and a half hours we are together, George sits still, but Dean is always on the move. He walks around the house, swaggering a bit with his new-found height and weight. He prowls around like a caged lion.

He partly makes up for his absent father with George and his family:

Nina says that one night Dean said to her "Mum I want you to listen to me and I want you to put on a set of balls". Dean needs his mother to act as mother or father, just as he said two and a half years earlier - 'My Mum is sort of both'.

Nina is a heroic figure. She has done her best to raise Dean and his brothers. But she says "I sent all my boys into football because that's a male arena. I wanted them to have some men around". Dean is turning into a young man she can feel proud of. But he still shows signs of strain. Like other men in my research who were deprived of a father, he tends to over-compensate by turning to extreme masculine behaviour. As he says himself, he is hugely protective of his family. "Dean's the man of the house", says George. Perhaps the load is too much for a boy to carry. I see some signs that all is not well with him - like the temper that he talks about but doesn't want to show me. And Dean needs to impress in a way that George does not.

Dean and George don't tell us the whole story about a father's relationship with a son. But in their different lives, they demonstrate some of the ways in which a father is important. It might be time for us to think again about the roles that men play in families.

# Names have been changed and some minor details obscured to protect those interviewed.