Responsible fatherhood is the single most important factor in the prevention of family abuse. It is so important that our treatment for domestic violence offenders, one of the more successful in the world, constantly stresses close emotional bonds with children. The logic is simple. We know from research that strong bonds with children increase self-value. And who is more likely to abuse, the valued self or the devalued self? The more a man values his children, the less likely he is to hurt their mother. In the vast majority of cases, the safest partner relationships are those in which the father feels emotionally connected to his children.
Science has known for a long time that emotional connection inhibits violence and that disconnection is a cause of violence. Violent criminals usually lack what sociologists call a stake in the community: job, marriage, positive neighborhood connections, religious affiliation, and satisfying relationships with children. Serial killers and terrorists almost never have close relationships with their children. Historically, armies wanted soldiers before they married or had children; when they did have them, they were kept isolated from them. Even in the other social animals, males connected to the pack are more cooperative and serve as significant protectors of the pack, while those driven from it become "rogue" predators. The steep rise in domestic violence since the 1960s directly parallels the diminishment of fatherhood in America. When fathers are marginalized as protectors of their families, they are more likely to struggle for power and control over their wives or girlfriends. They compensate for loss of the capacity to protect with dominance.
Successful treatment of family abusers restores the sense of father as protector. Children do not need fathers to fight and die for them; they need fathers to live for them, to value them, and to value what they most value: their mothers. A father who truly protects his children cannot possibly hurt their mother.
Our experience with nearly 5,000 court-ordered clients suggests that when fathers are more involved in the lives of their children, they are unlikely to hurt any woman. While still developing our intervention for domestic violence, we took a group of young men (mean age 22), all of whom had at least two children from previous relationships and who were court-ordered for abuse of their current partners. (At that time, there was only one agency offering domestic violence services, and they had a long waiting list.) As is too often the case with young fathers, none of these guys had a relationship with his children.
We gave them a brief course called, Compassionate Parenting, which raised their awareness of the emotional worlds of their children, particularly their need to have fathers who cared about them and looked out for them. Without direct intervention for domestic violence, these young men got more involved in the lives of their children and completely stopped abuse of their current partners. (The normal recidivism rate for unmarried men of this age group was over 60 percent, after domestic violence intervention.) Compassionate Parenting is now a crucial part of our domestic violence programs.
The instinct to protect children was (and is) necessary to the survival of the human species. (Our offspring are helpless much longer than those of any other animal.) The drive to protect is so deeply embedded in our emotional system that we cannot feel good about ourselves if we fail to protect our children. But when we protect them, we cannot feel bad about ourselves in the long run, no matter how we may fail in other areas of life.
