An interesting new study in the Journal of Marriage and Family uses a term I hadn't heard before: the social father. This is a man who is married to or cohabiting with a child's mother, but isn't the child's biological father.

According to this recap at physorg.com, the study, led by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examined the parenting patterns of four groups of fathers according to whether or not they were related to the children they lived with. The recap says that the study found married "social" fathers "exhibited equivalent or higher quality parenting behavior than married and cohabiting biological fathers."

That's good news for lots of children who aren't living with their biological dads. What do you think of these findings?