Matters of the heart

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the science behind dads and healthy children.

For decades, studies have shown that children who are raised by married, biological parents have a number of advantages. They tend to do better in school, are less likely to live in poverty, and are less likely to drink or do drugs.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A new study suggests a father’s involvement may influence more than behavior or school performance. Researchers say it could shape a child’s physical health years later.

A team of researchers at Penn State published the findings in the journal Health Psychology.

REICHARD: Well, joining us now to talk about it is Mark Feinberg. He's one of those researchers at Penn State.

Welcome, and thank you for being here.

MARK FEINBERG: Good morning, thank you for having me.

REICHARD: Let’s just start with the research itself. Close to 300 families were part of this long-term study. So generally speaking, Mark, tell us about the families who participated in the study, what part of the country they live in, socioeconomic details, and so forth?

FEINBERG: Sure. These were almost, as you said, 300 families primarily recruited in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas. And they were two parent families, mostly married, but not all. When we recruited them, they were expecting their first child during mid-pregnancy. And they were recruited for a randomized trial of an innovative new prevention program focused on helping parents get on the same page and co-parent together to coordinate the way that they support each other and raise their child.

REICHARD: Very interesting. So what family dynamics did you observe, and how did you go about that? Were they recorded? Did they fill out a form?

FEINBERG: We did ask them to fill out questionnaires, but for the study that we published, we looked at the data that we collected, videotaping family interactions. We went into their home, we asked them to play with their child for a total of 18 minutes. Were they warm? Were they inclusive? Were the parents competing with each other, were they withdrawing from each other? And then we're able to put together a picture of how that family is operating. 

We did that twice, when the children were about one year old, and then again when the children were two years old.

REICHARD: Tell us about the significance of observing these children over various stages of development.

FEINBERG: The family is changing very rapidly. When we're observing them with the children at one year of age, they're barely speaking, they're not so mobile. The parents are playing a very large guiding role in the play interactions, parents are still getting their feet under them as parents. And then when we videotape them again later, at two years old in this case, the children, as you know, are much more active participants. So the kinds of patterns and family interactions change a lot over that period.

REICHARD: Mmhm, makes sense. So, let’s get to the meat of it, tell us about the findings.

FEINBERG: The really fascinating piece that we found was that those co-parenting interactions, when fathers in particular were conflictual or withdrawn from the mother, we found that those children, seven years later, showed higher biological risk for poor outcomes, for poor cardiovascular outcomes, for prediabetes and diabetes. So something, we think, something about those stressful family interactions at age two predicted a child's health several years later.

REICHARD: That's so interesting. And what about the mothers? Did they have the same impact on the children?

FEINBERG: These are triadic interactions; mothers, fathers, and children. So the mothers were involved in the play interactions, but we did not find that mothers who were more conflictual had children who later showed greater health risks. We did not find a link there. We found the link for fathers only. This could be a random finding. It could be that mothers actually do have such an influence. So we don't want to make too much of this yet. 

So, fathers have a bigger influence on the way that children relate to others, their social adjustment, how they get along in the outside world, outside the family. And some researchers have connected that to higher levels of rough and tumble play that fathers engage in, in exciting children, that fathers bring children to a state of more excitement where they are excited but they still feel safe, and then they learn how to calm down in social interactions.

REICHARD: Well, what else surprised you about the findings? Anything?

FEINBERG: What surprised us is that we now know that early family interaction predicts long-term health outcomes or risk for health outcomes, and that stress in the family can have a long-term biological impact on children. And that's one really important reason to support families in having healthy supportive relationships, and especially between mothers and fathers.

REICHARD: Prevention on the front end means a lot. So how does this research challenge long-held assumptions about moms and dads and their involvement with their kids?

FEINBERG: Our basic perspective is that our fields of psychology, family research, intervention, providing services, has focused on mothers and only mothers for too long; trying to help mothers be better mothers, which ends up increasing the burden on mothers. 

Really, we need to take a whole family approach and try to support the family as a whole and have mothers and fathers work together.

REICHARD: Pennsylvania State University’s Mark Feinberg. He’s one of those researchers at Penn State who made the discovery and published the findings in the journal Health Psychology. 

Mark, thanks so much, so interesting.

FEINBERG: Thanks for having me.

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