Dealing With Dads: The Changing Roles of Fathers

One of the first lessons taught in sociology in the 1960s was that marriage was a universal or nearly universal institution. A cultural mechanism for regulating the potentially conflicting claims and obligations of parenthood, marriage simultaneously grants paternity rights to fathers and their families while ensuring social recognition and economic support for childbearers and their offspring. Marriage provides an added benefit for children by connecting them to a wider network of adults who have a stake in their long-term development (Malinowski, 1930; Davis, 1939).