You Could Care Less If Dad Is Gone

[261 words] Empathy is the ability to feel for others. It’s what makes us care about each other as people and forms the roots of compassion and love. In a world that struggles with bullying, anger, and coldness, you could imagine why people want to know how to build it. Richard Koestner, a psychologist at McGill University was attempting to do just that. He looked and found a study that had been conducted at Yale University back in the 1950s. It involved 75 men and women who had been part of a study when they were children. When Koestner and his colleagues examined all the factors in the children’s lives that might have affected how empathetic they became as adults, one factor dwarfed all others—how much time their fathers spent with them. They were expecting other factors, such as how affectionate parents were with their children, would be the key…