Father’s Day, Mother’s Day. How about Co-Parents Day?

Fathers stumbling through child-rearing are a familiar sitcom theme. But a growing body of research at the University of California, Berkeley, is challenging the perception that dads are goofy, uncaring or incompetent caregivers. On the contrary, preliminary findings suggest their parenting skills are crucial to their kids? social and academic success, and that teamwork in parenting is the ideal. 'There's a Mother's Day and there's a Father's Day. But there's no Co-Parents Day,' which should be celebrated, too, said Philip Cowan, a UC Berkeley psychologist and one of four principal investigators in the 'Supporting Father Involvement Project,' which is funded by the California Office of Child Abuse Prevention. Using randomized clinical trials and couples group interventions, Cowan and his wife, Carolyn Pape Cowan, also a UC Berkeley psychologist, have been working with men and women to help them 'be the kind of  spouses and parents they want to be? for more than 30 years. Preliminary data from their latest longitudinal study on father involvement underscores the benefits of two-parent families, regardless of gender or marital status.