«In the name of the father», or perhaps no longer. In these times of changing values and ideals, of the eradication of paradigms, of changes in bonds and relationships, which is changing the family model it is there for all to see. Perhaps less obvious is that the figure of the father is increasingly obscured, with a devaluation that doubles in the case of separated parents.
This is reported by the new results of the research conducted by ONLUS Forest Foundation with the participation of collaborators, Dr. Pietro Aliprandimedical psychotherapist, and Dr. Andrea Di Nisio, biologist at the University of Padua. The investigation was conducted between October 2022 and March 2024 through the administration of a questionnaire distributed to 4,383 students between 18 and 20 years old (average age 18.2 years) attending high schools high schools of Padua and Lecce, within the project Permanent andrological prevention in schools.
The data collected speak clearly and have highlighted the responsibility of the parental role in determining the risky behaviors of children, and how they perceive the father and mother figure: while the figure of the father is in free fall as a point of reference, the children seek authority in the figure of the mother.
«For fifteen years, the Foresta Foundation has been managing this project which is developed in schools, speaking to thousands of students, and we have collected a lot of material to compare the changes in the children’s behavior and family context», explains Doctor Carlo Foresta, former professor of Endocrinology at the University of Padua and president of the Foresta Onlus Foundation. «This year we decided to ask the kids how they perceived it the parental role within the family, between friendly, authoritative, indifferent and problematic, with distinction between mother and father”.
Overall the mother figure is most frequently seen as friendly (51.8% vs 44% of fathers), but for girls the father figure is more often seen as problematic (10% vs 5% of male peers). Even more marked is the difference in considering the paternal role authoritative in boys (42.2%) compared to girls (27.7%). We must then remember how the family constitution has changed over time: compared to 2005, when the project started, parents are 4 years older: the average age of the mother when the child is 18 is 50.7 and that of the father is 54. Furthermore one boy in five is the child of separated or divorced people. In this single-parent context, the mother is more often described as authoritative by sons (50%), but much less by daughters (32.8%), who instead describe her as friendly in 55% of cases compared to only 29.8% of her male peers.
«To clarify, in the eyes of his children, the authority of a separated father is halved (from 45 to 23% in males, and from 30 to 15% for females); the risk of appearing indifferent increases 2-3 times, and of being problematic up to 4-5 times compared to married fathers”, continues Foresta, “This devaluation seems more intense in male children, for whom the figure of the father as an authoritative reference collapses. The study also shows that children look for this characteristic in their mother after separation. We are still unable to understand the consequences of this paradigm shift. The constant increase in divorces and separations aligns with that necessary and desirable process of destructuring the patriarchal model. However, the outcomes of this process still appear imperfect, as they are in order of development.”
