The studies on the importance of fatherhood show that mother-love and father-love are equally important but are really just different in gendered ways. So things like empathy and cautiousness would go down if there weren't an involved mother. But the real issue is that in 84% of cases where two parents aren't together, the father isn't a presence in the child's life. It's due in part to a long history of social programs placing importance of the child's welfare on the *mother's* ability to care for the child and completely excluding the father, history of oppression, incarceration, cultural mores, and many other factors. But the predominant problem is men checking out. Mothers, not so much, but you can bet it's serious when they do.