Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth, to the Colson sect on John Stone Street.

Dads are crucial.

We've known that for a long time now.

For example, former president Barack Obama, despite advancing many policies that undermine

the family, remained an outspoken voice on the importance of loving and involved fathers,

according to all the evidence he was, partly correct.

Parents need their fathers, but they do best when their fathers are married to their mothers.

Earlier this month, at the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Berhini Wallace surveyed the overwhelming

and decades-long scientific consensus that fathers and fatherly love are irreplaceable in the

lives of children.

For example, a 2021 study from the Journal of Family Psychology found that warming-carrying

dads predict better mental health outcomes for their children, both boys and girls, with

such fathers experience fewer weight concerns, higher self-esteem, and fewer depression

symptoms.

The connection between physically present, emotionally available fathers, and mentally

healthy kids, is so strong that researchers have turned it the Good Father Effect.

A recent review that was published in the Journal of Children surveyed nearly four dozen

studies on the father-child relationship, and as Wallace described it in her words,

what these studies conclude is that, quote, fathers who were involved in caregiving and

play, who reacted with warmth and greater sensitivity to a child who expressed emotions, were

significantly more likely to have children with better emotional balance from infancy to

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