Dads have a ‘unique effect’ on kids’ attainment. Here’s how

Kids whose dads read, sing and draw with them may have an advantage once they start school, according to new research from the U.K.

“Fathers’ childcare involvement has a unique and important effect on the educational outcomes of children that is over and above the effect of the mothers’ involvement,” a report published by the University of Leeds found earlier this month.

The effect appears to stretch across a kids’ primary school years.

Those kids whose dads are often involved in “structured, educational activities,” for example, reading, have an advantage in their first year of primary school, the report found.

And it continues in that way — if dads engage in interactive activities with their kids when they are around the age of three, they do better in school by the time they are five. And seven-year-olds whose dads did activities with them when they were five did better in so-called Key Stage Assessments, which are tests on the national curriculum that British kids often take.

The positive impact holds true no matter the gender of the child, nor the families’ ethnicity or household income, according to the report.

The researchers analysed data from a survey of almost 5,000 households in the U.K. that include a mother and father, which was linked to academic data. It was led by the University of Leeds and conducted in collaboration with various research organizations in the U.K.

Activities like reading, storytelling, singing or other musical activities, drawing and crafts, as well as playing indoors and outdoors were some of the factors the survey considered as parents being engaged with their kids.

There are two main reasons why dads have such an important impact, the report suggests.

Firstly, having two involved parents rather than one means kids are exposed to different things that stimulate them in varying ways. That includes the way dads and moms behave unlike the other, when they use different language to speak to their kids, and…