Father Knows Best

Ziarat Hossain examines the changing role of fathers.

by Larry Walsh

.................................................................................................

In the 1950s TV sitcom Father Knows Best, Jim Anderson would come home from the office and switch into a comfortable sweater. Then, with the help of his beautiful, stay-at-home wife Margaret, he would calmly solve the problems of his three children: Princess, Kitten, and Bud.

The sweeping changes of the last fifty years have shattered this idealized and highly paternalistic model of family life. But these changes are not restricted to America or even Western Europe, as Ziarat Hossain’s research conducted in Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, and the United States is demonstrating.

Hossain, an assistant professor in the College of Education’s Family Studies Program, says, “The difficulty in studying just Western families is a cultural narrowness of field, and by studying international and multicultural families, you get a better perspective of the basis of what a human being is. You don’t have the blinders.”

Funded by a Fulbright Fellowship and grants from Malaysian universities, Hossain recently completed two studies on the changing roles of fathers in Malaysia. Because of the government’s highly successful campaign to develop the nation and its population, the country has undergone a significant reorganization of its family and community life.

“As the world is globalizing, we see the influence of Western cultural value systems all over the world,” he adds. “My intent is to see how much people have retained their cultural practices and how much they have been influenced by Western culture.”

On one hand, Malaysia is socially conservative; its family life is governed by Adat, a complex of traditions, customs, and laws that affirm patriarchy, control of women’s sexuality, submission of wife to husband, and children’s loyalty to their parents. On the other hand, its entry into the global marketplace as a newly industrialized country has required the creation of a highly educated urban workforce.

Hossain’s first study focused on rural and urban differences in fathers’ time investment in household labor in Malay families on the Malay Peninsula. Urban fathers who participated in the study had twice the education, five times the income, and worked longer hours than their more traditional rural counterparts. Yet, they also invested twice the amount of time in child care, preparing food, and cleaning.

The second study examined parental investment in early child care by urban Kadazan families in Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo. The Kadazan are one of the largest indigenous groups in the state and its principal rice farmers. Over the last twenty years, many Kadazan families moved to city centers, learned the Malay language, and became solidly middle class.

In the sample, all of the fathers and two-thirds of the mothers worked full-time. Both averaged around two years of post-secondary education, the same as the urban Malay fathers. The Kadazan families had the same, if not more, income and owned modern houses.

Nonetheless, the Kadazan fathers did not participate in child care as much as their urban Malay counterparts, although their involvement exceeded that of the rural Malay fathers. Fathers invested more time in play and soothing infants, but still not as much as mothers. However, with a couple of minor exceptions, neither parent treated male or female children differently, perhaps foreshadowing a more egalitarian future.

Jaipaul Roopnarine, a professor of Child and Family Studies at Syracuse University, notes that “Hossain has methodically documented patterns of paternal investment in understudied groups in the United States and in different cultural communities around the world. Such data are needed to shape family policies that emphasize paternal involvement in the majority world context.”

Thanks to grants from UNM’s Research Allocation Committee, the College of Education’s Overhead Funding Allocation Committee, and the Feminist Research Institute, Hossain is currently studying the interactions of Mexican immigrant mothers and fathers with their children and how those interactions help determine children’s academic readiness. He is also currently examining the relationships between parental involvement and children’s social and academic outcomes in Navajo families living on the reservation.

He says, “It is very important to understand diversity of families in the United States, not just white families. If you look at U.S. Census predictions, the ethnic minority population is going to go to forty-eight percent by 2050. Considering that demographic change in our society, it is very important that we understand what other people think and how they run their families.”