And at some very basic level, kids, especially boys, figure out that even very mild fathers are more threatening than mothers. There are moments in the rearing of a child when healthy fear is a necessary thing. Children fear to disappoint either of their parents, of course. But in general, it is fathers who tend to set the standards for their children-mothers who offer understanding and forgiveness. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who made her three sons her first priority when they were young, recalls that when her children reached the ages of ten and eleven, they began to seek more from their father and need less from her.
Fathers teach sons what it means to be a man and daughters what it means to be loved by a man.
Boys raised without fathers are so unsure of their masculinity that they become far more prone to express it through violence than sons of intact families. Seventy percent of inmates at juvenile detention homes are fatherless boys. Daughters raised by mothers alone, and thus starved for male attention, are far more likely to become promiscuous teenagers and single moms themselves than are girls who grow up with steady fathers. Men's shoulders are for hoisting toddlers on. Women's shoulders are for crying on.