the role of the father

• What is a caregiver

  Person who spends most their time with the baby
• what is the a01 point that should be made about attachment to fathers

  fathers are less likely to become the babies first attachment figure compared to mothers
• what are the percentages that schaffer and Emerson found in relation to attachment fathers

  3% of cases where fathers were the soul attachment

  27% joint attachment

  75% showed fathers to become important attachment figures
• do male caregiver make a unique contribute to a child’s early development in relation to distinctive role for fathers

  grossman 2002 did a longitudinal study (44 families) and looked at both parents behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children's attachment experience
• what is a fathers play style linked to

  the fathers internal working model
• what did field find in relation to fathers as primary attachment figures

  A babies primary attachment has special emotional significance so forms the basis of all like to close emotional relationships
• what was the evidence field found in relation to fathers as primary attachment figures

  when fathers take on the emotional role they adopt the role associated with mothers and they did this through filming three groups- mother (primary),fathers (primary) fathers (secondary)
• What were the findings into the role of the father in relation to distinctive role for fathers

  -Quality of infant attachment with mothers were related to attachments in adolescence

  -So it suggests father attachment is less important and is more to do with playing rather than emotions
• What were the findings of the role of the father in relation to fathers as primary attachment figures

  -primary caregiver fathers spend more time smiling, imitating, holding infants compared to secondary caregiver fathers

  -father can be more nurturing
• what is a key to attachment

  level of responsiveness NOT gender
• What is a weakness of the role of fathers

  inconsistent findings (p)

  due to researchers being interested in different research questions (e)

  some psychologists are interested in understanding the role of fathers a secondary attachment figures where as others are more concerned with fathers as primary caregivers (e)

  therefore this is a problem as it means psychologist cannot easily answer a simple question people ask (l)
• What is another weakness of research into the role of fathers

  it does not explain why children without fathers develop know differently (p)

  Macalum & golombok found children growing up in single or same-sex parent families do not develop any differently from those into parent heterosexual families (e)

  therefore this would seem to suggest that the fathers role as a secondary attachment figure is not important(l)
• what is another limitation into the role of fathers

  there are numerous influences which might impact on a child’s emotional development (p)

  for example their culture, the fathers beliefs, fathers age, father sensitivity, marital intimacy, amount of time the father spends away from home etc(e)

  so its difficult to control all these variables (e)

  therefore it is difficult to draw conclusions about the role of the father(l)
• what is the final weakness of the role into fathers

  it doesn’t explain why fathers don’t generally become primary attachment figures(p)

  this could be due to the result of traditional gender roles, in which women are expected to be more caring and nurturing than men. Therefore fathers simply dont feel they should act like that (e)

  on the other hand it could be that female hormones create high levels of nurturing.(e)

  therefore, females are biologically pre-disposed to be primary attachment figures(l)