The Father Factor myth

Not another misleading book about nature vs nurture!  According to a Reuters article, clinical psychologist Stephen Poulter, in his upcoming book "The Father Factor," writes that there are 5 types of father (which may be true enough) whose behavior has a lasting effect on their children (which is surely not proven).  Those types are:

1. super-achieving father
2. time bomb father
3. passive father
4. absent father
5. compassionate/mentor father

Poulter goes on to attribute those fathering types to behaviors in their children.  For example, children of the "time-bomb" father "who explodes in anger at his family, learn how to read people and their moods. Those intuitive abilities make them good at such jobs as personnel managers or negotiators... But those same children may have trouble feeling safe and developing trust."

It all sounds like common sense, so what's the problem?  The problem is, our common sense often misleads us when we consider human behavior, and should not be trusted.  We should be guided instead by experimental evidence, and be constantly aware of our own "folk psychology" biases.

In order to prove his conclusion, Poulter would have to show that (a) the unique genes that children receive from their fathers are not the cause of the children's behavior, and (b) there is a statistically significant and measurable increase in "intuitive abilities" in a large group of children with similar father types.  I seriously doubt he has done either one of these things.  He is relying on pop psychology, instead of the scientific method.

Comments

[Ben Carling]

I do not think that Dr. Poulter is offering the kind of scientific correlation that the critics decry his book for not being. If it were possible to draw necessary conclusions from various fathering styles or anything else about the effect of our parents the numberless studies already conducted would have surely found some. Instead, there is no correlation. This serves to indicate merely that whatever mechanism we utilize individually to apply the influence and example of our fathers is not uniform, not that there is no influence at all. Dr. Poulter wants us to recognize that we each had to deal with a father, to some extent, and that this process has had an effect. This effect is unconscious, and automatic. Taken for what they may be worth, his suggestions that a given parenting style may result in a particular effect on a childs adult professional and interpersonal life can be insightful and helpful. I don't categorize this book among those simply perpetuating a culture of victimization and blaming. He's not advocating shifting responsibility, and he's not piling on guilt, he's not even suggesting father's influences are universally negative, if anything he's arguing for greater acknowledgement of the value of fathers. What's wrong with that?