Dad’s the word: Children do better at school if their fathers read and play with them, study finds

For some fathers, it can be tempting to lie on the couch after a hard day of work instead of playing with their child.

But fathers who spend time doing fun and interactive activities with their son or daughter give them an educational advantage in school, a new study shows.

Data from almost 5,000 households showed that reading, playing games, drawing and even singing for children as young as three all helped improve their academic performance by the age of five.

And while mothers can also improve their child’s academic skills, they generally have more influence on young children’s emotional and social behavior.

Fathers can have a ‘unique impact’ on their children’s development, say Leeds University researchers, but they often feel less able to do so because of the demands of their work.

The new study was led by Dr Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School.

“Mothers still tend to take on the role of primary caregiver and therefore do most of the childcare,” she said.

‘But if fathers are also actively involved in childcare, this significantly increases the chance that children will get better grades in primary school.

‘This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with mothers, from an early stage in the child’s life, is crucial.’

The team’s achievements are not only due to the fact that ‘two heads are better than one’ when it comes to raising a child.

‘Fathers bring something different to the child’s development because they tend to interact with their children in different ways than mothers, the study claims.

For example, fathers are more likely to engage in greater physical involvement and activity, which helps develop risk-taking and problem-solving behaviors in children.

This could include building a fort out of furniture, kicking a soccer ball outside, or having a pillow fight.

For the study, the team analyzed a sample of 4,966 two-parent households in England – all with one mother and one father who were both still in a relationship.

The study did not take into account single-parent families, children of divorced families living in different households, or same-sex couples with children.

Fathers contribute to their child’s development when they make time to do fun activities with them, even if it is outside a party (file photo)

Data comes from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), which collected information on children born between 2000 and 2002 as they grew up.

Each parent’s involvement with their child was measured in the same way when the children were five and seven years old.

Both parents were asked how often they did various activities with the child, such as singing, painting, reading and telling stories, playing with toys or games and taking the child to an outdoor playground.

Parents responded on a six-point scale from ‘not at all’ (1) to ‘every day’ (6). The researchers added up the scores and compared them.

Overall, the team found that a father’s involvement in preschool (when the child is three years old) helped improve their performance in school at age five, in areas such as math, literacy and motor skills.

Fathers involved at age five also helped improve scores in seven-year-olds’ key stage assessments (commonly called SATs).

Meanwhile, mothers’ involvement had a particularly strong association with reduced child behavior problems and better prosocial behavior – such as good social skills and the ability to share easily.

The positive impact of a father’s involvement was regardless of the child’s gender, ethnicity, age in school and family income, according to the findings.

The graph shows the proportion of children who achieved a good level of achievement at the age of five, depending on how often fathers read to children at home

For busy, working dads, just 10 minutes a day can have educational benefits, according to the team, but more than this is ideal.

Researchers recommend that fathers make as much time as possible for interactive activities with their children.

They recognize that fathers are likely to be burdened by work demands, but this is partly due to outdated ‘societal expectations’.

Unfortunately, “the expectation that mothers should take primary responsibility for the care and education of children” continues to “dominate” in modern society – and employers are to blame.

Fathers are at home less often, due to shorter parental and paternity leave and because the mother has to take on the role of primary caregiver.

Researchers say the ‘societal expectation’ that mothers should take primary responsibility for the care and education of their children ‘continues to dominate’. This graph shows which parents a child’s school/preschool/kindergarten contacts most often on different topics (father = yellow; mother = light blue; both = dark blue) according to the fathers

Authors say: ‘The traditional ideal of mothers taking primary responsibility for the care of their children is perpetuated by many schools and childcare organizations, which often position the mother as the first point of contact in communications about the child.’

The experts are calling on all employers to offer more generous paternity and parental leave for fathers, which “can also help increase employee engagement and productivity.”

They also recommend that schools and daycare centers routinely collect contact information for both parents and develop strategies to involve fathers.

The research paper, titled ‘What a difference a father makes’, can be read in full on the University of Leeds website.