Does a Kid Need a Dad : Anguished parents look to the experts for answers. But studies show only that the debate will continue to rage.

Ilona Sherman was 43 and divorced when she set about having a child on her own.

“Marriage did not answer my needs. But I wanted to have a child. I was getting older. I wasn’t going to wait to meet someone to do it.”

She opted for artificial insemination and gave birth to a son, Adam Robert, 16 months ago.

“I think a father is very important, and I would like to get married at some point. But I’m a big believer that if you give a child enough attention and love, that’s what is important,” says Sherman, who owns a public relations firm in Los Angeles.

Henry Biller, however, takes issue with mom-alone types like Sherman.

“There are lots of (women) who say that fathers are the disposable parent,” says Biller, a psychologist and well-known researcher on fatherhood at the University of Rhode Island. “They say, ‘Just give us enough money and we’ll put the child in a good school.’ I don’t agree with that. I think you are putting kids at risk without a regular, quality, consistent relationship with a man.”

But, he notes, with a hint of resignation: “Despite mounting evidence for the importance of the father-child connection, many people still believe that Dad just provides a little extra and that kids get what they really need from Mom.”

Indeed, if you look at childbirth in 1994 in the United States, you might conclude that, after the sperm, the presence of a father is optional.

Births to unwed mothers have jumped a shocking 70% since 1982, according to the 1993 census, with 27% of children under 18 living with a single parent who had never married. And when divorce or death is figured in, about 55% of children will spend some portion of their lives in a single-parent household, almost always headed by the mother.

Clearly, fatherlessness is a social trend to be reckoned with, experts note, especially with so many public policy issues--from welfare reform to child custody judgments--being hashed out with a closer look at what the father contributes to the nuclear family.

Notwithstanding Dan Quayle’s point of view, society needs to know: Does a kid need a dad?

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Single, divorced or widowed mothers tend to cling to the view that a child’s overall environment matters more than the presence of a father--and research backs them up, to some extent.

Barbara Gale was a toddler when her parents divorced, and her father faded out of her life.

So at age 42 and single, she thought long and hard about her desire to raise a child on her own.

But she is confident about her decision. She did fine without a father, Gale reasoned, so would her daughter, Gabriella, who was adopted at birth in June, 1993.

Gale, who has her own entertainment company in Los Angeles, is irritated by the frequent theme of politicians who point to single-parent families--which are headed by mothers 86% of the time--as the root of many social problems.

“Have them come to my house,” she scoffs. “I don’t think my child will lack for anything--emotionally or otherwise.”

Other mothers point out that even with the potential drawbacks, life without father is sometimes better than with him.

Bonnie Owens walked out of her home 22 years ago with her toddler, a suitcase and $32 in her pocket. She wasn’t concerned about leaving her baby’s father behind.

“I thought her being with me and not with a father was more emotionally healthy than being in a two-parent household where there was discontent and a lack of respect,” says Owens, a Los Angeles talent agent. “But I had a really great support system. My point of view is that a child will be well-adjusted if they have a good environment. And a good environment doesn’t have to be a mother and father.”

Zulma Garcia, 16, tried living with the father of her baby for about a year after the child’s birth. After they broke up, he stopped seeing the child, who is almost 2 years old. And Garcia is relieved.

“I don’t worry about her not having a father,” says Garcia, who lives in Los Angeles. “At this point, I think it’s best to let it go because of the kind of person he is. I think I’m doing the best for her with him not being around. What’s the use of having a father and a mother in the house if they don’t get along and there is always mental and verbal abuse? That doesn’t mean this child will grow up very healthy.”

Research is not clear on whether a stable, secure, loving environment can fully compensate for the lack of a father. But some recent studies indicate that if a mother has other, supportive adults to lean on, the child fares well.

“It’s beneficial for children to live with two adults, but they don’t necessarily have to be two parents and they don’t necessarily have to be people of the opposite sex,” says Helen Wintrob, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York, who has studied father absence. She is a single mother of an adopted child.

Studies of families headed by homosexual couples, moreover, have found few negative effects on the children.

“There is no evidence of adverse effects on kids raised by two women,” says Ross Parke, director of the Center for Family Studies at the University of California, Riverside. “That raises the issue that constantly occurs in this field: Is it the effects of the father per se or the effects of having an additional person around to be supportive? There is some evidence that fathers are important. But there is still a question of what unique roles they play.”

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Because fathers have long been viewed solely as breadwinners, little research has been done to pinpoint their emotional, spiritual, moral and intellectual contributions to their children. But that doesn’t mean that fathers don’t greatly influence a child’s development, say a growing legion of social scientists studying fatherhood.

Research has shown that while a child may not become a felon or societal outcast simply because he or she is fatherless, there is a distinct “two-parent advantage,” says Biller, the University of Rhode Island psychologist.

For example, children with fathers tend to get along better with their peers and display more social confidence. They face new situations better, adapt to change more easily, and score higher on intelligence and aptitude tests. They are typically more independent and responsible.

“A man and woman raising a child together will present a child with a broad range of experiences,” Biller says. “They treat children differently, and by doing so, provide them with different ways of approaching life.”

The fatherless child lacks something in a purely emotional sense, too, argues Dr. Martin Greenberg, a San Diego psychiatrist and the author of several books on fatherhood.

“There is an absence of images, thoughts and stories related to fathers,” he says. “There is an absence of a role model, but worse than that is the absence of a spiritual structure; an image based on feelings and memories.”

Since mother-only families often translate to economic hardship, too many Americans think of fatherlessness only in terms of the dollars lost, Greenberg says. But you can’t put a price on a father.

“There is still very little recognition of the importance of a father,” he says. “There is a tendency to see the father as the bringer of money. There is not a sense of how a father provides spiritual meaning and values.”

Fathers who participate fully in child-rearing enrich their children’s lives immeasurably, Biller says. Independence, assertiveness, attitudes about femininity and masculinity, and choice of occupation are all areas in which fathers tend to be more influential, studies show.

“(Fatherless children) are less likely to actualize their potential,” he says. “They are more likely to succumb to peer pressure and less likely to take on responsibility. But they may not have severe problems; some studies have not found big differences. The problem in these studies, very often, is that you are not defining what you mean.”

For example, Biller and others point out, studies of fatherless children may not consider whether the child has one or more “father figures” or supportive adults in their lives.

“Obviously, many people who were deprived of their fathers grow up to be normal, healthy adults who lead normal, healthy lives and are more than adequate husbands and wives, mothers and fathers,” notes Biller in his book “The Father Factor: What You Need to Know to Make a Difference” (Pocket Books, 1994). “They may have benefited from having the kind of mother who could cope with the challenges of single parenthood. Or they may have had older brothers, uncles, stepfathers, or male teachers who filled in the gaps in their lives.

“Many of the disastrous results predicted for children who grow up without fathers are based on studies of the most extreme cases of father absence, abuse or neglect.”

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Despite the strong feelings on both sides, the bulk of the research provides no clear answer on whether a child needs a father.

Much of the research on fatherlessness has focused on children whose parents divorced or whose fathers died, showing that the circumstances surrounding fatherlessness matter greatly.

That’s why the question, “Will a child suffer from not having a father?” is so very difficult to resolve, Parke says.

“People aren’t sure if the effects on a child are from the lack of a father or the conditions surrounding it. It’s tricky.”

What seems to matter is economic security, the presence of an extended family, the security of a neighborhood, the child’s gender and whether the mother has ever been married.

For example, children who lose contact with their fathers after a divorce tend to show some problems depending on their age and gender.

“There is a fair bit of consistent evidence on this,” Parke says. “One is that girls seem to do better than boys. After a couple years, girls, particularly younger girls, seem to settle down and do fairly well compared to non-divorce families. The boys, however, do not seem to fare as well. There is more tension between the mothers and boys. Mothers seem less effective at controlling the boy. That tends to translate into not doing as well in school, not getting along with peers.”

Moreover, a classic study found that fatherless boys often develop “hyper masculinity” to compensate for the loss.

“We think it has to do with the fact that a male child who didn’t have the advantage of having a father would tend to identify with the mother and her feminine characteristics,” says the study’s author, Dr. Allan Barclay of the University of Missouri, St. Louis. “In order to adjust to the masculine role, they had to adopt a more high-powered masculinity.”

Other research has revealed that problems for girls may occur later in life.

“Although a lot of girls who grow up fatherless seem to develop without problems, so many of them run into difficulties later in life because they now are having to deal more with men,” Biller says.

Research on children born to unwed mothers paints another, generalized picture of children handicapped to some degree.

“These kids generally don’t do very well,” Parke says. “For boys, there tends to be behavioral problems. But again, it’s not clear if that is just father-absence. It could be the mothers’ lack of education or poverty.”

The bottom line in all of the research, Biller says, is that “we have to preface things in individual differences. There are always exceptions. To make a statement that every child will be affected in a particular way is impossible. We can only talk about probabilities.”