In this article, Jenet Jacob Erickson explains that fathers and mothers tend to play distinctive roles nurturing children’s development. It reviews social science research that shows how mothers and fathers differ in their psychological orientations, strengths, and styles of interaction with children, but also how they complement each other in influencing children’s social and emotional development. The article uses biblical, doctrinal, and prophetic sources to support its claim that gender is an essential characteristic of individual and eternal identity and purpose, and that both parents are capable of providing the essential nurturing for children. The article concludes that the combination of complementary differences and similarities between mothers and fathers enables them to influence children’s development in a way that is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Read "It Takes Two: What We Learn from Social Science about the Divine Pattern of Gender Complementarity in Parenting" by Jenet Jacob Erickson on byustudies.byu.edu.