After decades of focusing on the mother's role in parenting, family studies researchers have turned their attention to the role of the father in parenting and family development. The results shed new light on childhood development and question conventional wisdom by showing that beyond providing the more traditional economic support of the family, fathers do indeed matter when it comes to raising a child.

Stemming from a series of workshops and publications sponsored by the Family and Child Well-Being Network, under the federal fatherhood initiative of the National Institute of Child...