What happens when a researcher tries to measure the parent-child bond using the same standard yardstick for both moms and dads?
Dads lose.
That’s what Dr. Kathryn Kerns discovered when she talked to teens and preteens about their parents.
But something wasn’t adding up: the kids were describing “rich, warm relationships” with their dads. So why weren’t the fathers scoring better?
Because the researchers were using the wrong yardstick.
Turns out you can’t evaluate dads the same as moms, because fathers parent their children very differently than mothers do.