Far too many babies and children in the United States today struggle with myriad conditions that negatively affect their emotional, mental, and physical health. We initially see this tragedy in the high rates of infantmortality and low birth weight babies and then in the discouragingly high numbers of youth who are obese, get pregnant, contract a sexually transmitted infection, smoke, binge drink, abuse drugs, develop an eating disorder, or attempt suicide. Sadly, when young people look at adult men they often find poor role models who are ill-equipped to help them avoid or correct unhealthy behaviors.
References
1.
BirdC.E.RiekerP.P.. Gender and health: The effects of constrained choices and social policies (Cambridge University Press, 2008). An overview of how diverse layers of social life are interconnected, contributing to health disparities between men and women.
2.
CourtenayW.H.. “Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men's well-being: A theory of gender and health”, Social Science #38;#38; Medicine (2000) 50: 1385–1401. A critical review of how various conditions shape the kind of masculinity men construct and how those practices contribute to differential health risks.
3.
DoucetA.. Do men mother? Fathering, care and domestic responsibility (Toronto University Press, 2006). Grounded in qualitative data, this book highlights fathers' opportunities to be more nurturing and engaged parents.
4.
GarfieldC.Clark-KauffmanE.DavisM.M.. “Fatherhood as a component of men's health”, Journal of the American Medical Association (2006) 296: 2365–2368. A thoughtful interdisciplinary essay that conceptualizes the relationship between fatherhood and men's health.
5.
MenningC.L.StewartS.D.. “Nonresident father involvement, social class, and adolescent weight”, Journal of Family Issues (2008) 29: 1673–1700. Provides a quantitative analysis of two waves of the well-respected National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health survey.
