The A to Z of Early Years. June O'Sullivan
to engage dads from the beginning, especially those reluctant dads, as not all pregnancies are planned. The benefits from encouraging dads’ involvement in the pregnancy start early. For example, a mother is more likely to maintain a healthy lifestyle during the pregnancy – if she was a smoker she is less likely to smoke if her partner also gives up smoking – and when the baby is born those mothers who want to breastfeed have a greater chance of success. Is this not a good enough argument to support a longer paternity leave?
The benefits of engaging dads early and getting them to realise their contribution is a message that is all too quiet, especially in a world where a balanced feminist debate is rarely heard and the voice of the child is very often silent. Women are told they can do everything alone, and I am sure they can, but perhaps we need a stronger voice to see how we can help support the whole-family approach to rearing a child. We know that attachment security is associated with superior functioning in young children – and young children with secure attachments to both parents do better than children who are securely attached to only one parent. The media has a role to play in this. The Think Fathers campaign commented on this, noting that the presentation of men in soap operas was almost entirely negative. This is very unhelpful given the huge audiences they attract and the power they have to start conversations about issues. The media also has a responsibility to consider the impact it can have on society's attitudes and this plays out in reality, e.g. offering those fathers with tenuous ties to their families little hope to try and make an effort to stay in touch, to the detriment of their children.
Positive engagement from caring dads matters throughout childhood: they are crucial in creating a family environment that is more conducive to their children's care and safety. Children of involved fathers are more likely to enjoy school, participate in extracurricular activities, graduate, be more likely to succeed in their work, and grow up mentally healthy. In families under stress there are lower levels of neglect, even when a family is battered by unemployment and poverty. Having them involved is associated with children's positive psychological wellbeing, lower levels of delinquency and children less likely to do drugs (Rosenberg and Wilcox, 2006). However, the key issue here is warm and engaged dads: highly stressed dads have a harmful effect on their toddler's cognitive and language development as well as a longer-term negative impact on their children's social skills and self-control, and this is more evident in boys.
While better-educated fathers, like better-educated mothers, have a more positive impact on their children's early learning, those children with dads who are involved in their lives continue to have higher cognitive functioning throughout their childhood and into their adult lives.
Dads will bring a different perspective on some things and open up new opportunities and interests for their children. According to Campbell and von Stauffenberg (2008) toddlers with involved fathers start school with higher levels of academic readiness. They are more likely to develop problem-solving and adaptive skills and handle the stresses and frustrations associated with schooling more readily than children with less involved fathers. Dads’ engagement appears to be a powerful catalyst for mathematical enquiry and thinking, building their children's confidence, especially their daughters', with longer-term educational benefits.
Dads who read to their children are consistently associated with benefits to their children's emergent literacy and a greater interest in books later in life. Dads singing a lullaby, telling a story or repeating funny rhymes, enrich children not least because of the different intonation accents and speech sounds. Dads engage in play differently, and are more willing to let their children take risks. We notice this at nursery when suggesting home-learning activities.
The message is therefore clear, i.e. that dads are very important to their children's lives both in the here and now and in terms of their future success. But of course, we don't operate in a perfect world. Many unlucky children live in families where there is domestic violence. In the year ending March 2019 as many 1.6 million women in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse and too many children observe these situations (Office for National Statistics, 2019b). While of course not all domestic violence is perpetrated by men, a father who abuses his partner will not add much value to his children's lives. In fact, it undoes all the benefits and has the reverse impact on the children's development and future outcomes. How a dad treats their children's mother can influence his children's lifelong attitudes to women, as well as having a detrimental impact on their mental wellbeing and sense of self.
The Dad job description needs to be shaped from the skills, understanding and behaviours that require him to be sensitive, warm, close, friendly, supportive, intimate, nurturing, affectionate, encouraging, comforting, and accepting. For mothers, that means allowing Dad to play his part and develop successful co-parenting, because when fathers are supportive and encouraging, mothers are more competent parents.
Dads are more involved nowadays. Even if you don't bother to Google the research, just look around you. It's not surprising given that the modern economy requires two incomes to survive. We see more dads bringing and collecting their children to and from nursery. However, we want to see this become the norm so all children can benefit from a positive involvement with their dad.
Call to Action
Our call to action really requires us to consider the Dad narrative in terms of the parent messaging, media portrayals and employment policies.
Follow on Twitter
@dadbloguk
@DadsRockEdin
@fatherhoodinst
@homedadnet
@JohnCarnochan
@Jossycare
@The_dadventurer
@thefatherfactor
Further Reading
Farmer, N. (2012) Getting it Right for Boys. London: Bloomsbury.
Sharp, A. and O'Sullivan, J. (2019) 50 Activities for Dads. London: Bloomsbury.
E is for Early Learning Goals
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a statutory framework for learning, development and care for children from birth to five in England (DfE, 2014). The introduction of the EYFS was a bit of a shock to a very disparate sector, but I have always felt it did a great job in cohering the sector around a framework with a clear set of standards and that it was a very significant lever in shaping quality.
The principles which framed the EYFS are worth mentioning as they are warm and ambitious and not uttered often enough today. The view was that every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. That includes a secure, safe and happy childhood, good parenting and high-quality early learning. Combined, these three elements are the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.
The EYFS framework, which has become a most significant document in the life of any early years setting, combined the welfare requirements to safeguard children with learning and development requirements known as the Early Learning Goals (ELGs). These were designed to ensure that the educational programmes of every early years setting were designed to provide children with the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary to enable them to manage the transition into Key Stage 1 (children aged five to seven years). Since then, much to our consternation, this has been pushed further down and the term ‘school ready’ is used for children as young as three.
Like any significant document, it is regularly reviewed and sometimes used as battleground for bigger philosophical arguments. For example, in 2009 there was a call by the Cambridge Primary Review to extend it to children age six and scrap KS1. Concerns were growing that how the framework was applied was leading to an overload of arbitrary bureaucratic expectations. In 2010, the then Minister of State for Children and Families, Sarah Teather, commissioned Dame Clare Tickell to review progress, especially in terms of the focus on getting children