A psychologist interested in studying the phenomenon of emerging roles in fathers, Dr. Levant spoke to Lon Woodbury on a one hour radio show on L.A. Talk Radio about struggling adolescents. The topic of the discussion was "Just what does it mean to be a father?"
The host of the radio show, Lon Woodbury, is the publisher of Woodbury Reports, Inc., founder of Struggling Teens, and a prolific author. Lon has worked with families and struggling teens since 1984 as an educational consultant.
About Dr. Levant
The guest teaches psychology at the university level and he earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Harvard.
Shifting Perspectives on Fathers
Today, Dads are familiar with readying children for school in the early morning and making supper for them when they come home in the evenings. Over the years, fatherhood has transformed considerably, and now the roles of couple are more or less interchangeable and Dr. Levant recalled an extremely memorable course that he had actually offered in the 1980s on the changing role of fatherhood that helped initiate a more expansive view of fathering.
Still, these radical changes are only taking place in American subcultures rather than as a collective shift in attitude. "Businesses in America are slow to recognize that fathers need parenting time," claimed Dr. Levant and he also believed that forward thinking men who wanted to play a larger role in their children's lives were still frequently not respected much by mainstream culture, which often portrayed fathers in sitcoms and advertising as bumbling fools when it came to parenting.
Nevertheless, despite this bias against men who wanted to be more available to meet their children's needs, the gap between mothers and fathers was dwindling noticeably, and in many families both parents were willing to carry babies, console preschoolers, and take their kids to team sport practices or other appointments.
Tragically, after a divorce, almost half of the fathers remained separated from their kids. Youngsters needed their parents to be there for them as they matured, and the absence of dads, and even moms, produced emotional damage. Because one one-half of marriages statistically ended up in a messy breakup, this degree of emotional injury to children was fairly pervasive throughout American culture.
Breakups in a relationship where there are children cause all kind of issues--from absent to visiting fathers. In some cases, too, dads were given custodianship when the mother was thought to be incompetent by the court. Adding to this morass of psychological complication for children was the whole idea of combined households, stay-at-home dads, and homosexual fathers.
The host of the radio show, Lon Woodbury, is the publisher of Woodbury Reports, Inc., founder of Struggling Teens, and a prolific author. Lon has worked with families and struggling teens since 1984 as an educational consultant.
About Dr. Levant
The guest teaches psychology at the university level and he earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Harvard.
Shifting Perspectives on Fathers
Today, Dads are familiar with readying children for school in the early morning and making supper for them when they come home in the evenings. Over the years, fatherhood has transformed considerably, and now the roles of couple are more or less interchangeable and Dr. Levant recalled an extremely memorable course that he had actually offered in the 1980s on the changing role of fatherhood that helped initiate a more expansive view of fathering.
Still, these radical changes are only taking place in American subcultures rather than as a collective shift in attitude. "Businesses in America are slow to recognize that fathers need parenting time," claimed Dr. Levant and he also believed that forward thinking men who wanted to play a larger role in their children's lives were still frequently not respected much by mainstream culture, which often portrayed fathers in sitcoms and advertising as bumbling fools when it came to parenting.
Nevertheless, despite this bias against men who wanted to be more available to meet their children's needs, the gap between mothers and fathers was dwindling noticeably, and in many families both parents were willing to carry babies, console preschoolers, and take their kids to team sport practices or other appointments.
Tragically, after a divorce, almost half of the fathers remained separated from their kids. Youngsters needed their parents to be there for them as they matured, and the absence of dads, and even moms, produced emotional damage. Because one one-half of marriages statistically ended up in a messy breakup, this degree of emotional injury to children was fairly pervasive throughout American culture.
Breakups in a relationship where there are children cause all kind of issues--from absent to visiting fathers. In some cases, too, dads were given custodianship when the mother was thought to be incompetent by the court. Adding to this morass of psychological complication for children was the whole idea of combined households, stay-at-home dads, and homosexual fathers.
About the Author:
Discover more about the problems faced by Struggling Teens. Lon Woodbury records the entire interview on his L.A. Talk Radio show for people to listen to at any time.
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