Why every teenager needs a dad 

The data is clear. When teenagers have secure attachments with their father—a father who is parenting them sensitively, validating their identity—they will likely not just survive the tricky waters of adolescence, but thrive.

This is not a case of dad simply enhancing mum’s input, as is so often the suggestion put forward by those who seek to diminish the importance of fathers, but of making a unique contribution, distinct from that of mothers. Where this unique contribution is absent the risk of negative outcomes for teenagers is significantly increased. This may be seen by some as a controversial statement, but all teenagers need a father—whether biological, social, step or adoptive. What matters is willingness to parent. Fathers are, in short, an adolescent mental health and wellbeing task force, but one that is too often untapped and unsupported.

How Dads matter

For many years the mantra in scholarly circles was that dads had no role to play in any aspect of child development. The environment of development was created solely by mom because of her primary caretaking role. But this is one of the many myths that has, thankfully, been busted by the science of fatherhood, a relatively new area of research that has now been in existence for nearly two decades and is the core of my own scholarship on close human relationships.

The foundations for a healthy and happy adolescence begins long before the child enters the fray of high school. It starts in early childhood, where the creation of a secure attachment is key.

Fathers build a unique attachment to their child, equally as powerful as that between mother and child but crucially different. While mom’s attachment is founded on nurture, dad’s is built on the dual foundations of nurture and challenge. The bond between father and child is built upon stimulation, on physical activity and on pushing the boundaries of development forward. We see this in the rough-and-tumble play that defines many of the interactions we capture between dads and children in their early years and in the gaming and sports that fathers readily engage in with their adolescents. The stimulatory aspect of these interactions is crucial as it contributes to the two developmental outcomes for which dads are the key parent: the development of a broad spectrum of social skills and cognitions, and the building of mental resilience.

We all know that the adolescent years are challenging. The locus of attachment starts to shift from parents to peers, along with a striving for autonomy and a more distinct individual identity—questioning who you are and what you stand for. At the same time the adolescent brain is going through a process of aggressive reorganization meaning that some of the most vital skills—emotional regulation, empathy, impulse regulation and executive function—are less easy to access.

BoyDads and GirlDads

These changes result in some different challenges for boys and girls. For girls, whose identity and self-esteem are more wrapped up in their close interpersonal relationships, navigating the social complexity of relationships with other girls is the key challenge. For boys, the challenges are more around education and developing an identity that expresses their masculinity in a positive way. But in both cases dad is the key influence on how well they navigate these hurdles because he is the parent when it comes to scaffolding his child’s entry into the world beyond the family.

Consequently, fathers have a powerful influence on the development of social language, prosocial behaviors (that’s sharing, caring and helping), executive function (attending, behavioral inhibition and working memory) and emotional regulation. Further, his focus on stimulatory activities which are physically challenging and, at times, risky, means that he is also the parent of mental resilience. These activities push the child to the limit, introduce challenges, allow them to assess risk and encourage them to recover from failure. Replicated cross-cultural studies have shown that adolescents who have secure attachments to their father have a lower risk of depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and loneliness. It is dad who holds the key to how successfully his child navigates our complex social world, arguably the biggest factor in our success and wellbeing, and confronts the challenges and risks of group living.

For girls this means that they navigate the intense, emotionally charged relationships which they form with female peers with their mental health and self-esteem intact. Dad underpins the social skills, resilience and emotion regulation which are vital to surmounting this social challenge.

For boys a secure attachment to dad means they bring appropriate learning behavior to the classroom, because of his influence on their social development, enabling them to get the best out of their education. Combined with the high self-esteem which a close relationship to dad engenders, this father-son attachment means that they are more likely to embrace the example of positive masculinity embodied by their father—one underpinned by empathy, vulnerability and a focus on sexual equality but also ready to express the positive aspects of their drive to protect and their strength. A close relationship to dad reduces the need to fill a knowledge void with the negative talk of the manosphere.

How to be a TeenDad

Finding an ‘in’ with your teenager can be difficult, as every parent knows. But fathers should know that what matters most is simply spending time, one on one, with their teenager. It isn’t about extravagant gestures. It is about joining his adolescent in their interests, whether it is video games, sports, or something as simple as cooking Sunday lunch together. The numerous car journeys which litter the teenage years, ferrying teenagers to formal activities or meet-ups with friends, provide an ideal place to get to know your teen and affirm their identity. Dads can be reassured that these efforts do not go unnoticed, even though at times it can feel like it. In a 2004 study published by the UK’s National Children’s Bureau, teenagers were asked what aspects of their father’s input they valued the most. The top two answers were encouraging them at school and helping them develop their talents, followed by being attentive, being affectionate, spending time with them and talking to them. Discipline was well down the list. Breadwinning was not mentioned.

The good news is that fathers are spending more time with their teenagers, and that teenagers increasingly see their father as a source of help and comfort. Data from the Next Steps cohort, a cross-sectional UK study found that the proportion of young people who reported speaking to their father most days about something that mattered rose from 19% to 35% between 2004 and 2013.

And for all the talk of an epidemic of father absence, it is clear that non-resident fathers are not necessarily absent from their children’s lives. Indeed, data from the Millenium Cohort Study shows that at age 17, well into adolescence, 85% of children who did not reside with their biological father were still in contact with him and that of these, 52% saw their father in person at least once a week.

The message we need to share far and wide is that fathers are crucial to their teens. However, in a world that continues to trade on a number of myths about fathers—including their dispensability and their lack of influence on development—many fathers are unaware of their unique role. Society is a long way from supporting them to fulfil it. This short sightedness and resistance to cultural change has consequences for us all. The recent Lost Boys report, published by The Centre for Social Justice, as well as a new study from the UK-based Fatherhood Institute, summarize the current understanding surrounding the impact of fatherlessness on teenagers. The conclusions of both are stark. Teenagers who do not have the input of a father, of whatever type, are significantly more likely to suffer poor mental health, to exhibit anti-social behavior and criminality, to suffer addiction, to have poor educational outcomes, engage in a range of risky sexual behaviors, and to suffer lifelong with their ability to sustain the healthy relationships which are the foundation of our wellbeing.

This is a tragedy for those children, but it is also costly to our society. Fatherhood practitioners, even armed with irrefutable data, still face an uphill struggle to convince the public and policymakers that dads are not the sum of the myths we perpetuate about them, but provide a unique and vital input into their children’s lives. We must support fathers to be present in their children’s lives and afford them the opportunity to take up their role as co-parents, by acknowledging their need for dedicated and exclusive time to parent and welcoming them as willingly as we do mum into every aspect of their child’s life.

Recentering fatherhood will require a wholesale cultural change. It will take time to overturn the deeply held beliefs and unconscious biases which many hold about fathers. But it is a fight worth having. As our children are born into an ever more complex world, we need dads to provide their brand of unique and vital support. At a time when many teenagers are struggling to find their place in the world and we see troubling trends in terms of mental health, self-esteem and sense of identity, it is truly the case that we need fathers now more than ever.

Anna Machin

Anna is a doctor of evolutionary anthropology, a writer and broadcaster. She is world renowned for her work in the science and anthropology of close human relationships.