Make Room for Daddy..

CHILD PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Just because fathers spend less time with their kids doesn't mean they influence them less than mothers In fact, fathers who have behavioral disorders often beget mental disorders in their children.

So conclude Vicky Phares, Ph.D., and Bruce Compas, Ph.D., psychology professors at the Universities of Florida and Connecticut respectively, after reviewing 577 studies on parents, kids, and their problems. They contend that fathers, like mothers, contribute to psychopathology in their offspring by direct interaction as well as through indirect processes such as marital conflict and family stress.

When Phares and Compas took kids as their reference point, they found that father factors mom often led to "external" problems (such as behavior disorders) than "internal" problems (such as depression and anxiety).

Kids of troubled dads developed hyperactivity disorders, conduct disorders, and delinquency.

Among fathers, external problems such as alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder often contibuted to external problems in kids. Although rarer, fathom with internal disorders have just as great a pathological effect on their kids.

In studies where the fathers were referred or diagnosed, the children had many types of maladjustment. Having a father with emotional or behavioral malfunctioning is "a sufficient (but not necessary) condition for a kid to be st high risk for psychopathology," reports Compas.

The fact that mothers are primary caregivers does not negate the contribution of fathers In their children's upbringing. Mothers and fathers have a similar impact, positive and negative.

The time fathers do spend with kids has profound effects on them. Henry Biller, Ph.D., author of Child Maltreatment and Paternal Deprivation, says we haven't really acknowledged the special role of fathers in children's upbringing. We only see them as helping out moms. "There is resistance In society to really take fathers seriously." Too bad it takes serious problems for us to take them seriously.

ILLUSTRATION: (MARYBETH MACFARLAND)