It's also the tried and true method a family remains functional and successfully raises children to become psychologically healthy and responsible adults. But every new father wants to reinvent the wheel like it's an egotistical matter of his choices. This is how kids get screwed up, the extremes of no father and too much father. Kids with friends as fathers turn out to be real assholes. Father should just sit in his chair, read his paper, watch his news, and be bored out of his mind, but you know, ready at a moment's notice to discipline at mother's request, or to rush a broken arm to the emergency room, or just be positive and supportive when things don't matter, and it is so rare that anything actually matters.