Encouraging Risk Taking

We've all seen the stereotype of the father figure who watches his children playing out in the road while sipping a beer and leaning over to another man saying, "teaches 'em to watch out for traffic." This stereotype plays in to the traditional fatherly role as mostly a passive observer until it is time to protect the child physically from outside threats. While both the passive encouragement of risky behavior, and the physical protectiveness seem like opposites, what links the two roles is that they are both seen as not nurturing. In the last posting, I pointed out how protectiveness actually can be nurturing, so far as it enables our children to take risks. Here, I'd like to point out that encouraging risk taking is also nurturing. However, like protectiveness, if it is taken too far it can become harmful, even becoming neglectful. It is truly sad when a father does not participate in the child rearing to the extent that his children take unnecessary risks without his knowledge. On top of being harmful for the children, it also denies those men the most significant and enjoyable task of life, i.e. child rearing.
Men and boys take more risks when testing and in business. This risk taking has helped men ask for raises more often than women, and helped boys take more educated guesses on the SATs and ACTs than girls which results in higher scores, even though boys have worse grades on average than girls. Being able to take a risk is probably the thing that men are most able to turn to their advantage over and over again. If men are dominant in our society, one of the reasons is that they are far more willing to take risks. Particularly with girls, but also with boys, men in our society are in a better position to encourage safe but meaningful risks on a daily basis, from the playground to socializing. This talent is extremely important to the traditional women's work of parenting. We should not take seriously the stereotype of the bad father watching closely while his children to play with fireworks while Mom stands disapprovingly in the background. We should laugh at that stereotype because we know that those kids will score higher on the SATs than their peers, apply to more prestigious schools, seek more salary raises, and maybe even allow their children to take more risks than the children of the inactive father next door.