Philobiblon

… and no this isn’t the start of a women and bicycles joke. But, once you slog past the super-models in bikinis, included on distinctly thin grounds, and the women inexplicably dressed in evening wear and with makeup slathered on like concrete (so Daily Mail!) there is actually a proper, interesting story in today’s Observer Woman magazine.

All that stuff about how all boys being reared by their mothers turn into hoodie-wearning hooligans … seems it is wrong. Instead, a researcher has found that many families are better off without the dad.

Peggy Drexler, an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University and a former gender scholar at Stanford University, has published Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men (Rodale Books). In a unique study she followed more than 60 fatherless families over 10 years. As time went by she practically became another member of the family in these households. She picked up boys from school, dropped them off at sports clubs, spent weekends and holidays talking in depth to both them and their mothers. All the while taking notes and taping conversations. What she discovered stunned her and has divided public opinion. It goes to the heart of the very idea of the apple-pie American family: is it necessary for a son to have a dad?

Since the book was published she has criss-crossed the country, talking about her research in the nation’s bookshops, lecture theatres, radio stations and television studios. She’s been short-listed for publishing awards and approached by HBO to make a documentary based on the families she met. Her findings contradict many judges, social scientists, religious groups and pundits. But what she discovered was that a boy’s morality and masculinity can be cultivated without a live-in father.

Indeed, she goes even further. In her view, traditional families have much to learn from these households: that boys from fatherless homes can fare better than boys raised in nuclear families.