INTRODUCTION Nobody really knows how or when it started, but one of the most widespread--and most cherished--myths about child rearing is that women are naturally more nurturing than men, that they are instinctively better at the parenting thing, and that men are nearly incompetent. The facts, however, tell a very different story. A significant amount of research has proven that men are inherently just as nurturing and responsive to their children's needs as women. What too many men (and women) don't realize is that to the extent that women are "better" parents, it's simply because they've had more practice. In fact, the single most important factor in determining the depth of long-term father-child relationships is opportunity. Basically, it's come down to this: "Having children makes you no more a parent than owning a piano makes you a pianist," writes author Michael Levine in Lessons at the halfway point . Men and women parent differently, in a wide variety of ways: Dads tend to play more with their children than mothers do, and that play tends to be more rough-and-tumble and more unpredictable than mothers'. In other words, dads are more likely than moms to become human jungle gyms.

Dads tend to emphasize independence more than moms and give children more freedom to explore. If a baby is struggling to grab a toy that's just out of reach, mothers are more likely to move the toy closer, while dads are more likely to wait a little longer, seeing whether the baby will be able to get it. Moms are more likely to pick up a baby who's fallen, while dads are more likely to encourage the child to get up on his own. Dads tend to use more complex speech patterns than mothers, who tend to simplify what they're saying and slow it down. Dads tend to ask their babies more open-ended questions (who, what, where, when, why) than moms, an approach that helps to expand their vocabulary. Dads tend to think more about how a child will fare in the world as he or she grows; moms tend to think more about the child's emotional development. When reacting to a test score, for example, a dad might be more concerned about how the score will affect the child's future plans and ability to be self-sufficient while ay mom is more likely to be concerned about how the score makes the child field. Dads tend to represent the outside world while mothers represent the home.

You can see this almost anyplace where the parents are out with their babies: dads tend to hold their children face out while mothers hold them face in. Please keep in mind that I am talking about general tendencies. Plenty of moms wrestle with their kids and use big words, and many dads rush to pick up fallen toddlers and hold their babies facing inward. The point is that they parent differently--not better or worse, just differently. And children benefit greatly from having plenty of exposure to both styles. It shouldn't come as any surprise, then, that fathers have very different needs from mothers when it comes to parenting information and resources. But more than a decade into the twenty-first century the vast majority of books, videos, seminars and magazine articles on raising kids are still aimed primarily at women and focus and helping them acquire the skills they need to be better parents. Fathers have been essentially ignored--until now.