The other day, at school drop off, I saw a father holding a toddler while his first-grade son huffed off to line up for school. The father, wrestling the squirming toddler, still called his son back, and insisted the son say good-bye with a kiss and hug from dad. The son complied with a dramatic air, but a smile emerged across his face. The power of physical affection is strong for children.
Research is clear that skin-to-skin contact has positive effects on infants and especially for preemies. With the contact, the heart rate becomes more steady, body temperature regulates, and stress reactions are reduced. This kind of contact can come from Dad and Mom. Many parents have no resistance to touching, hugging, kissing, blowing raspberries, bouncing, and other forms of contact with infants. However, it seems that as children move out of babyhood, fathers become less and less demonstrative of affection. Dads, we need to change this!
Physical affection helps to reinforce those feelings of connection, trust, and support in children that fathers often neglect to show. According to research, men are more likely to do something supportive than saying or physically communicating affection. Affection results in positive outcomes for children. Child Trends, a leading research institute, has reported that kids who receive warmth and affection also report higher self-esteem, better academic performance, greater parent-child communication, and fewer psychological and behavior problems. Fathers, don’t hold back.
As kids grow up, it is easy for us dads to let kids avoid the hugs and kisses and other affectionate gestures. I think this plays into our views of masculinity, and research supports the idea that fathers tend to express the amount of affection with their children that they report having received from their fathers. If this still holds, today’s dads have to work harder to buck that trend. At the same time, physical affection from dad helps to model healthy masculinity for children. Daughters see that being masculine includes being trustworthy, reliable, supporting family, and expressing feelings. Sons learn that showing affection is all part of being a healthy man.
Some dads may have trouble feeling comfortable with expressing affection. For dads who have a hard time saying, “I love you,” the National Center on Fathering advises to go into the child’s room at night when the kid is sleeping, and practice saying it. With more regular practice, it will come out naturally during the day. Notes containing expressions of love can be slipped into lunches and backpacks or written on foggy bathroom mirrors (and later text messages). Fathers can also not allow kids to avoid physical affection being offered because they are embarrassed or uncomfortable at the attention. An easy way to address this embarrassment is to say, “That is how we interact in our family,” or something similar. This sentiment allows the kid to explain then that the “embarrassing” behavior is a family thing but also reinforces what the actual standards for behavior are in the family.
I read a parenting book once where the author advocated for holding your child’s hand unexpectedly and saying, “I just like holding your hand.” The idea is that because parents spend so much time directing a child’s behavior that there may be much less time simply providing reassurance. As a dad, I do spend less overall time with my daughter than my wife does, and that time is often filled with directions and requests to do something. By just taking my daughter’s hand casually, I think I can remind her that I support her, care for her, and love her unconditionally.
Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch, MSW, Ph.D., CFLE is a Professor of Human Development at California State University, Monterey Bay and is a Certified Family Life Educator. He and his wife are parents to a chatty 5-year-old daughter and reside in Marina.