Why a Christian Professor Says Dads Are the 'Secret Sauce' of Children's Thriving

Ask most grown men and women who taught them to ride a bike, swing a hammer or stand up straight after a hard loss, and many will answer with one word: Dad. A Christian scholar in Michigan says the country has forgotten what that word is worth.

Anthony Bradley, a professor at Kuyper College, a private Christian college in Michigan, and a distinguished research fellow at the Acton Institute, told The College Fix in an interview published Monday that fathers have been overlooked for decades ^[1]. "Fathers really are the secret sauce for children thriving," Bradley said ^[1]. His book on the subject, The Fatherhood Effect, is due out later this month ^[1].

What the Professor Argued

Bradley's starting point is a troubling gap. By his account, girls are thriving while young men struggle, and he links much of that divide to family structure and to fathers in particular ^[1]. He told the outlet that children's closeness to their fathers predicts success in school, emotional health and faith, as well as whether children carry their family's values into adulthood ^[1]. He estimated that about 60 percent of college freshmen are now women ^[1].

He argued that for 30 to 40 years, society has treated mothers as the essential parent and fathers as optional, an emphasis he said the research does not support ^[1]. He traced part of the problem to welfare policies of the 1960s and 1970s that, in his view, discouraged marriage and the presence of men in the home ^[1].

Bradley was careful to say the new attention to fatherhood should not become a substitute for marriage. The healthiest and most involved fathers, he said, are married and living with their children ^[1]. He also stressed that dads do not need advanced degrees to make a difference. Children often pick up their fathers' interests, including reading and math, and fathers help children learn to manage emotions and impulses, especially through physical play ^[1]. A father can simply ask his child what he learned in school that day and let the child teach it back ^[1].

What the Research Shows

The numbers behind Bradley's concern are sobering. About 18.2 million American children, roughly 1 in 4, live without a biological, step or adoptive father in the home, according to 2025 Census Bureau figures compiled by the National Fatherhood Initiative ^[2]. The financial strain on those households is real. In 2011, children in homes headed by a mother with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6 percent, more than four times the rate for children of married couples, according to federal data the group cites ^[2]. Much of that weight falls on mothers doing the work of two.

The group's research summary also points to studies linking early father absence to delinquency in adolescence and adulthood, and to research finding that men who grew up without their fathers were more likely to become absent fathers themselves ^[2]. That is a cycle worth breaking.

There is encouraging news as well. University of Southern California psychologist Darby Saxbe, author of Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives, told the Institute for Family Studies that the share of children living with their father is about 76 percent, the highest since 1989, according to Census data ^[3].

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A father's influence also reaches beyond his own front door. Research by economist Raj Chetty and colleagues, released in 2018 and later published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found that the few places where the income gap between Black and white Americans is relatively small tend to be low-poverty neighborhoods with little racial bias and high rates of father presence among Black families ^[4]. Black boys who moved to such neighborhoods earlier in childhood went on to earn more and were less likely to be incarcerated, though fewer than 5 percent of Black children grow up in such places, the researchers found ^[4]. The findings suggest that the presence of fathers across a whole community, not only in a single home, is tied to boys' prospects.

Dads Are Not Backup Moms

Saxbe's own research tracked couples from pregnancy through a baby's first year and scanned men's brains along the way ^[3]. She found that new fathers' brains appear to lose some gray matter volume, which she linked to fine-tuning of the networks that process social information, while their testosterone dips and bonding hormones such as oxytocin and prolactin shift ^[3]. In the language of faith, men are made to be changed by fatherhood.

Saxbe said there is robust evidence that children of involved fathers do better in school, at work and in physical and emotional health, and that fathers' contributions are "additive, not duplicative, of mothers' contributions" ^[3]. In her lab, dads who did more of the early child care reported better marriages and less parenting stress, and fathers' involvement also appears to help mothers' mental health ^[3]. Yet as IFS scholar Brad Wilcox noted in the interview, studies of parenthood favor mothers by more than 10 to 1 ^[3].

Schools, Churches and Neighbors Step Up

Bradley believes schools have a large role to play. Too often, he said, schools call mothers by default; he wants them to involve fathers just as much, noting that social and emotional skills are learned mainly at home rather than through classroom lessons ^[1]. He pointed to Southwood High School in Louisiana, where 23 students were arrested in three days before 40 fathers formed a group called Dads on Duty, after which there were no further incidents, The College Fix reported ^[1].

Similar efforts are spreading. The National Center for Fathering's WATCH D.O.G.S. program now operates in more than 4,704 schools in 46 states, inviting fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers, uncles and other father figures to serve at least one day a year in school activities assigned by the principal ^[5]. At least four states, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Utah, have passed laws requiring age-appropriate lessons on the so-called success sequence of finishing high school, working and marrying before having children, according to an Institute for Family Studies interview with Delano Squires of the Heritage Foundation ^[6].

Churches are answering, too. At First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Maryland, Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr. estimated that more than 800 couples take part in marriage and family ministries, including mentoring, newlywed and blended-family programs ^[6]. In Spartanburg, South Carolina, Pastor Tommy E. Quick founded Christian Families Against Destructive Decisions, which offers a marriage boot camp and a 30-day couples devotional and has bought a 127-acre property for a planned national campus for family restoration ^[6]. Squires urged leaders to design family-strengthening programs that include fathers ^[6].

A Word of Grace for Single Mothers

None of this is a verdict on the millions of single mothers who rise early, work hard and pour themselves into their children. Bradley himself warned against shaming language aimed at absent fathers and called instead for supporting fathers' mental health and restoring the dignity of fatherhood ^[1]. The goal is not blame but men who show up.

That is why grandfathers, uncles, coaches, deacons and neighbors matter so much. A man who coaches a youth team, greets students at a school door or sits with a boy after church may be the steady presence a child needs. Fatherhood, in that sense, is a calling that can be shared by every good man in a community.

Why Fatherhood Still Matters

Christians have long understood what the research is now describing. The Old Testament closes with the prophet Malachi's promise that the hearts of fathers would turn toward their children, and the hearts of children toward their fathers. Bradley argues that a child's closeness to Dad shapes faith as well as grades ^[1], and Squires put the traditional view plainly: children do best in a loving, safe and secure home with their married biological parents ^[6].

Fatherhood is not a lifestyle accessory. It is a vocation, and one that society has too often treated as optional. On a day when the nation honors the men and women who served in uniform, it is worth remembering that some of the most important service in America happens quietly, at the kitchen table and on the ball field, by fathers who simply keep showing up.