If you had to choose, which would you rather have: a healthy father or a good father?

Studies suggest men often choose being a good father over being healthy.

Becoming a father is a major milestone in the life of a man, often shifting the way he thinks from being “me focused” to “we focused.” But fatherhood can also shift how men perceive their health. Our research has found that fathers can view health not in terms of going to the doctor or eating vegetables but how they hold a job, provide for their family, protect and teach their children, and belong to a community or social network.

As founder and director of the Center for Research on Men’s Health at Vanderbilt University and as a postdoctoral fellow from Meharry Medical College, we study why men live shorter lives than women, male attitudes about fatherhood, how to help men engage in healthier behavior – as well as what can be done to reduce men’s risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Work, sex and health

Working with men to try to get them to be more physically active, eat healthier and maintain a healthy weight, we found that for many, their own physical and mental health is not high on their list of priorities. Men, we found, treat their bodies as tools to do a job. Health is not always important or something they pay much attention to until poor health gets in the way of their ability to go to work, have sex or do something else important to them. These roles and responsibilities are often the ways they define themselves as men and how others in their lives define their worth.

While many aspects of gender roles have changed, we have found that many men still recognize they are often defined as good or successful if they have paid employment that is enough to take care of their children and other responsibilities. Fathers generally aspire to be able to look after their children, spouse, partner or other loved ones. That may mean less sleep, longer hours at work and less free time for hobbies and exercise.

Wanting to be a great dad can motivate men to push themselves to work longer and harder than they may have thought possible, but these choices can come at a cost, particularly if they also are not making time to take care of themselves.

We have seen evidence of despair, such as depressive symptoms, having thoughts of suicide, heavy drinking and marijuana use, among adults in their 20s and 30s. These behaviors tend to be higher in men during the time when they tend to become fathers for the first time. Consistent with this pattern, unintentional injuries and suicide are leading causes of death for men across racial and ethnic groups in their 20s and 30s. This is not the case for women.

By age 45, heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death for all groups of men. These chronic diseases can be prevented, to some degree, by not smoking, eating healthier foods and drinking less alcohol. Also, improving sleep, sitting less and moving more are important behaviors for good health.

Rather than trying to restart these behaviors after taking a break from them for a number of years, studies have found that it is important to help men keep healthy behaviors a part of their lives as they age.

As men age, they may not make deliberate choices to engage in less healthy behavior, but they may just do so because their lives and environments make unhealthy choices easier than healthy ones. Policymakers have to think about how to make it easier to make healthy choices in men’s daily lives and to incorporate health into the time fathers spend with children and family or at work. Men don’t have equal access to healthy foods or the same opportunities to go to the doctor, be physically active or earn a living wage, and yet, if asked, they all want to be healthy and have a positive influence on their children and families.

Where does making time for their own mental and physical health fit into dads’ busy, stressful lives? We have found that it will be different for every father, but loved ones have to help them find a way. Based on our research, we believe that families, particularly women in men’s lives, can play an important role in encouraging fathers to eat healthier and take better care of their health.

Wives in particular often provide emotional support, offer advice, facilitate men going to the doctor and promote healthy behavior. Wives, daughters and other women in fathers’ lives are important sources of information about men’s health, and they often play a key role in helping fathers and other men better understand and cope with stress.

As we celebrate fathers, it is important to recognize that fathers, generally speaking, may not place health at the top of their priorities. Many fathers gladly sacrifice to see their children happy, safe and successful. The problem is that if fathers think only about these goals, their own health can often suffer.

Derek M. Griffith, Professor and Co-Director of the Racial Justice Institute, Georgetown University and Elizabeth C. Stewart, Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wetlands aren’t the most eye-catching ecosystems. They include swamps, bogs, fens and other places where soil is covered by water most of the time. But they perform a huge range of valuable services, from soaking up floodwaters to filtering out pollutants and providing habitat for thousands of species of mammals, fish, reptiles, insects and birds.

In a high-profile 2023 ruling, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court greatly limited federal power to protect wetlands. According to one estimate, this ruling stripped federal protection from up to 90 million acres of wetlands across the U.S.

Today, the U.S. is losing wetlands, mainly to development and agriculture, at an accelerating rate. With Congress polarized and gridlocked, new federal wetland protection laws are unlikely to be enacted in the next several years.

Some states have stepped up to fill the gap, but others have instead chosen to roll back their existing protections. This comes despite the fact that even before the Sackett ruling, people across the U.S. strongly favored more protection for wetlands.

We are environmental law scholars who recently conducted a study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Minnesota Law Review, that explores how private environmental governance can protect wetlands. This approach uses private agreements, certifications and other practices such as monitoring and dispute resolution to foster sustainability.

Relying on private action is not a substitute for regulation, but it can act as a stopgap while other legislative and regulatory efforts are developed. And it can complement new laws and regulations once those measures are in place.

Certifications and supply chain leverage

Corporations and nongovernment organizations have a variety of ways to encourage protection of wetlands.

First, certification bodies can develop standards for wetland-friendly goods, much like fair trade labels for products that promote safe working conditions, environmental protection and living wages for producers. Greater use of such standards can allow customers, investors and lenders to vote with their wallets. An example might be a label that identifies products made from ingredients grown on farms that preserve wetlands.

For construction, a gold standard already exists for the environmental certification of buildings: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification. LEED already incorporates some wetland protections, and its requirements can be bolstered to ensure protection of wetlands exposed as a result of the Sackett ruling.

Next, corporate pressure can use supply chain contracting to influence the sectors most likely to fill in wetlands: farming, construction and forestry. Corporations could require suppliers to agree not to damage wetlands exposed by the Sackett decision, in the same way that companies already use contracts to address other environmental issues.

For example, Whole Foods Market requires suppliers to follow a code of conduct that includes minimizing their impacts on the environment, avoiding deforestation and seeking opportunities to conserve water. Similarly, Albertsons, the fourth-largest U.S. grocery store chain, requires suppliers to strive to reduce natural resource destruction and water contamination.

The role of banks and investors

Large institutional investors and lenders can also play a role. Those with sustainability policies can insist that developers seeking funds follow pre-Sackett wetland protections.

Major banks have already shown various degrees of commitment to sustainability. In 2003, 10 leading banks from seven countries adopted the Equator Principles, a set of principles designed to “serve as a common baseline and risk management framework for financial institutions to identify, assess and manage environmental and social risks when financing projects.”

This includes conducting environmental risk assessments of projects applying for financing, adopting measures to minimize and mitigate risks, and as a last resort compensating for unavoidable effects. We believe this list should be expanded to include assessing the risk of wetlands loss in project financing.

Several banks recently backed out of adhering to these principles but pledged generally to continue to follow them. Nongovernment organizations can help protect wetlands by tracking financing for proposed developments in vulnerable areas.

Reducing flood risks

Insurance companies can also help fill the gap in wetland protection. Because wetlands are valuable buffers against floods, property insurers have a vested interest in reducing wetland losses.

Many California insurance companies facing rising costs due to climate change have stopped issuing new policies there. Similar decisions are occurring in other disaster-prone states such as Louisiana and Florida.

Without access to insurance, businesses will be less likely to invest in these states. Reducing flood risks due to wetland destruction could help reduce risk for insurance companies.

Private insurers could refuse coverage to properties that significantly degrade wetlands no longer protected after Sackett, or they could make coverage contingent on binding commitments not to degrade wetlands. And conservation groups could work with private insurers to develop climate-focused coverage for particularly sensitive wetlands left uncovered after Sackett.

In an example of this approach, The Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, bought insurance in 2022 to fund restoration of Hawaii’s coral reefs if they are damaged by hurricanes or tropical storms.

Retail customers, employees, community members and nonprofit groups can place economic pressure on companies to incorporate such protections into their operations. This kind of private pressure has already spurred companies to pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Until states and Congress pass new laws to prevent wetlands from being destroyed, we see action by businesses and nongovernment organizations as the most promising substitute.

Steph Tai, Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michael Vandenbergh, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Energy, Environment and Land Use Program, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.