“Strong religious values are beneficial to helping dads be better fathers”
“Moms think communities of faith are the top place for dads to get fathering help”

In December, the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) released Mama Says: A National survey of Mothers’ Attitudes on fathering, the first-ever national survey taking an in-depth look at how today’s mothers view fathers and fatherhood.

Conducted online by the University of Texas Office of Survey Research, Mama Says surveyed 1,533 mothers over the age of 18 with at least one child in the home under the age of 18. They were asked a series of over 80 questions dealing with a range of topics, such as their general opinions about fatherhood, views on work-family balance, and obstacles to good fathering.

What do moms really think? The following are the top fourteen conclusions drawn from the study.

· 93% of moms believe there is a father absence crisis.
· Most moms think dad is replaceable.
· Married moms were happier with dads’ performance than moms not living with dad.
· Married moms believe more in the power of marriage to help dad be the best he can be than moms who are cohabitating or separated from dad.
· Dads of young children got better marks than dads of teens.
· Closeness to children and work-family balance were the biggest predictors of mom’s satisfaction with dad (after living arrangement).
· Most moms said they could do a better job of work-family balance if dad provided more help.
· Moms said that “work responsibilities” were the biggest obstacle to dad’s success in fathering.
· Strong religious values are beneficial to helping dads be better fathers.
· Moms think communities of faith are the top place for dads to get fathering help.
· Nonresident dads think they’re doing a better job than the moms who co-parent with them think they are.
· African-American moms weren’t as happy as white or other minority moms, but most of the difference can be explained by living situation or family structure.
· New romantic relationship for dads equals less happy moms.
· Moms who aren’t living with the father of their children identified more and stronger obstacles to his ability to parent.

The researchers conducting the study were:

Dr. Norval Glenn, PhD. Norval Glenn is Ashbel Smith Professor and Stiles Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research over the past three decades has been mainly family-related and has focused on such specific topics as the trend in marital success in the United States, the social and demographic correlates of marital success, marital matching and mate selection, and the trend in the views of family scholars about recent family change.

Glenn is a member of the Research Advisory Groups for both the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative and the Texas Healthy Marriage Initiative, affiliations that both reflect and have intensified his interest in how social scientists can fruitfully contribute to family policy. Glenn holds a BA in Social Science from New Mexico State University and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, PhD. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has written widely on family, fatherhood and child well-being for such publications as the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She is the author of The Divorce Culture: Rethinking Our Commitments to Marriage and the Family (1997) and Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman (2003). Her 1993 Atlantic Monthly article, “Dan Quayle Was Right” won an EMMA award from the National Women’s Political Caucus and was recently reprinted in the 150-year retrospective, “The American Idea: The Best of the Atlantic Monthly.”

A co-director of Rutgers’ National Marriage Project for nine years, Whitehead is the newly named founding director of the John Templeton Center for Thrift and Generosity at the Institute for American Values. For the next few years, she will be exploring the effects of overindebtedness on family stability and economic security. She holds a MA and PhD from the University of Chicago in American history.