This past weekend was a project weekend. The red-eared slider I rescued when he was the size of a quarter has since outgrown his thirty-gallon tank. Without the room to put a bigger tank inside, I went the other route. Build a tank outside. Now, I could have simply bought a pond setup complete with faux rocks and a cascading waterfall but that isn’t much of a project, is it? No, I decided to do it all myself.

I went to a feed store and found an oval 100 gallon stock tank. Pretty straight-forward. Fill it up with water and drop the turtle in. But he also needed a place to bask in the sun. So I built a floating dock out of some wood flooring scraps we had in the garage. Simple. Then the real project began…I decided I would build the filter from scratch.

It’s a dangerous thing, the Internet. When researching filters I came across, “Do it Yourself Filter from a Five Gallon Bucket.” Do- it-Yourself and five gallon bucket in the same search result?! The filtering material was made from 99 cent store scrubbing pads.  My inner McGuyver awakened. I dreamed about it all Friday night and was at the hardware store when they opened first thing Saturday morning. I had sketches and measurements stuffed into my pockets. My wife, frightened or understanding, kept the boys clear. Over the next two days I glued and caulked PVC together. I fired up my power tools. I failed, redesigned, and went back to the hardware store five different times. By Sunday afternoon, despite a few leaks that had to be re-patched, I considered my DIY filter design a success.

This morning I’m back to play-cooking with my sons. They are serving pancakes and juice. My point in all this is that despite the rewards of caring for my sons during the week,  I still crave projects like these. I think they are a healthy extension of a stay at home dad‘s job. This weekend was about having a short term goal and seeing it through.  I admit it was nice not yelling at my boys to put down the hacksaw or stop pouring sand into the tank.  When my boys are older and calmer I’ll certainly share some of my destructive construction skills with them. But this was more about the sense of accomplishment–even with something as goofy as a DIY turtle tank.  I feel rejuvenated. And the turtle seems happier too.

While praising the role of stay-at-home moms during a book tour, Dr. Laura Schlessinger took the opportunity to slam dads doing the same job. “I recommend that during the first three years, the mom should be at home because all of the research shows that the person whose body you come out of and whose breast you suck at, at that stage, really needs to be the mom — unless she’s incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.” Really? Only in lieu of incompetence should a father be considered the go-to parent?

I think the research she lightly refers to is based on the mother vs. having an absent parent. With her comment, Dr. Schlessinger suggests that fathers are the “second parent” in the household, or even less. There’s significant research that confirms her statement when compared to no parent at home, an absence of a mother, or single parent raising children. But it is a grand assumption to say that because of gender the child gets none of the benefits of having a parent actively nurturing that child.

I believe this bias comes from the belief that the gender of the child’s primary caregiver will affect the social and psychological growth of the child. This assumption is irresponsible and potentially damaging to the confidence a stay at home dad needs to do his job well. So let me be the one to say, males and females are equally capable of meeting the daily responsibilities of their children. Men and women can feed, nurture, comfort, bathe, and encourage equally well. Other than breast feeding and better balanced hips, there is nothing physiologically that makes a mother’s job easier than a fathers in caregiving.

As for the research, studies tend to support point a much more positive outcome than Schlessinger’s opinion when dads stay at home. A 1996 study from McGill University in Canada found that the “single most important childhood factor in developing empathy is paternal involvement in childcare”. The study also concluded that fathers who spend time bonding with their children nurture more compassionate adults. These are striking results in the arena where men are most often accused of having the weakest natural ability.

Further studies conducted by Dr. Kyle D. Pruett from the Yale School of Medicine documented the favorable response of infants when held by their fathers. Pruett also found that a father’s parenting style is beneficial for a child’s physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral development. His studies showed that during the first five years of a child’s life, the father’s role is more influential than the mother in how the child learns to manage his or her body, navigate social circumstances, and play.

So fear not fellow dads. The research is on our side. Don’t let radio personalities convince you otherwise. Keep at it and know how important you are to raising good secure children. It comes naturally, after all.