ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief study of relative costs and benefits of fathering. Fathers listed pride as a benefit of involved fathering whether or not they were receiving compliments from others about their children or their fathering. Fathers spontaneously talked about their continued learning. Their children had provided a rich and varied context for them to learn many different things: child development, about relationships, about themselves, and about specific skills and abilities. If one engages in a cost-benefits analysis of involved fathering, it is clear that there are significant contributors to positive and negative columns on the balance sheet. In Lamb et al'.s words: Increased paternal involvement promises both advantages and disadvantages to fathers themselves. Lamb et al. concluded that 'the fact that increased paternal involvement may have both beneficial and detrimental consequences for mothers and fathers precludes us from concluding that changes in paternal involvement would necessarily be either 'good' or 'bad' in themselves'.
