Are Fathers More Replaceable than Mothers?

By Don Hubin, PhD

What does this  graph represent?!

Let’s give some background first.  The picture is an ngram—a representation of the frequency with which a word or phrase is found in Google’s vast library of digitized books and articles. This ngram shows the frequency of two terms since 1940. The full graph, only part of which is shown here, indicates that neither term was found with any frequency in published writings before 1940. In the 1940s and part of the 1950s, they were both found with about the same frequency. But by the late 1950s there was an increasing gap in the frequency with which these two terms appear—a gap that expands significantly from around 2000 on.

Okay, but what terms do the lines in this ngram represent?

The red line indicates the frequency of the term ‘mother figure’ and the blue line shows the frequency of the term ‘father figure’.

And that’s why this ngram is relevant to National Parents Organization's mission. We believe that fathers and mothers are equally important to their children. When a father is not present in a child’s life—because of death, distance, or (regrettably) his choice—father figures can play an important role in the development of both boys and girls. And we celebrate the men—step-fathers, grandfathers, uncles, or others—who play the role of a father figure in children’s lives.

Father figures, then, can be important. But if a mother isn’t present in a child’s life—through death, distance, or (regrettably) her choice—a mother figure can play an important role in a child’s life, too. So, why don’t we hear as much about mother figures?

Often when politicians or pundits are talking about the importance of fathers, they will slide imperceptibly into talking about father figures, as if they’re not changing the subject. We never hear those politicians and pundits  talking about the importance of mothers make a similar slide into talking about mother figures.

This difference suggests a, perhaps unconscious, belief that fathers are replaceable in a way that mothers are not.

But a father figure isn’t a father. And fathers are no more replaceable than mothers. There are many reasons for father absence, some beyond our control. But we should take all reasonable steps to ensure that our laws and customs are not causing some of the father absence that we lament. And, right now, they surely are.

Until every state in the country has a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parenting when parents live apart, our laws and court practices will continue to contribute to the problem we try to address by finding replacements for fathers: father figures.

We should honor those men who play the role of father figure when necessary, but first we should ensure as much as possible that children don’t need a father figure in their lives because they have a father in their lives.