role of the father

• three researchers - role of the father

  * Schaffer and Emerson

  * Grossman

  * Field
• Schaffer and Emerson research - role of the father

  * majority of babies become attached to their mothers at 7 months old

  • 65% mother primary
  • 3% father primary
  • 27% mother + father primary

  * most fathers become important attachment figures

  • 75% father attachment at 18 months

  * fathers are much less likely to be primary caregiver than mothers due to societal norms, oxytocin levels and biologically
• Grossman research - role of the father

  * longitudinal study of babies attachment until in teens

  * quality of mother attachment = emotional attachments in adolescence

  * quality of father play = quality of adolescence attachments

  * fathers are important for play and simulation for babies development and later attachments
• Field research - role of the father

  * primary attachment figure has a special emotional attachment with the infant

  * fathers as primary caregiver adapt the emotional role

  * 4-month-old babies in face-to-face interactions

  • primary mother
  • primary father
  • secondary father

  * primary fathers spend more time in reciprocity than secondary fathers so have potential to provide responsiveness for close emotional attachment
• type of observation - Field research

  controlled + structured
• four ao3 points - role of the father

  * biological evidence for primary mother

  * real world application

  * longitudinal study

  * conflicting evidence
• ao3 biological evidence for primary mother - role of the father

  mothers have social expectations and stereotypes into staying at home and looking after their child. additionally, an infants mother is the one that breastfeeds them, meaning they spend more time having skin-to-skin contact and are biologically in tuned. this increases the level of oxytocin in both mother and baby, increasing the likelihood of the mother becoming the primary caregiver.
• ao3 real world application - role of the father

  parents are offered advice when it comes to the role of the father, and can also be used to reassure certain families. heterosexual families can be informed that fathers are very capable of becoming the primary caregiver, and are still important in the development of attachments in the future. lesbian-parent/single-mother families can be reassured that not having a father around doesn’t affect the child’s development. this results in parental anxiety around the role of the father decreasing, increasing validity and value of the studies.
• ao3 conflicting evidence - role of the father

  longitudinal studies suggest that the father role is very important when is comes to play and simulation, meaning if a father was not present in a child’s life, their development would be poor and different. however, this is not the case as children do not grow up differently in lesbian-parent families compared to two-parent heterosexual families. this reduces the validity of Grossman‘s research and the question as to whether fathers have a distinctive role is still unanswered.
• ao3 longitudinal studies - role of the father

  Grossman carried out a longitudinal study meaning we can study development in attachments over time, minimising individual differences and gaining an insight into cause and effect of certain behaviours, increasing validity of the research. however, longitudinal studies are time consuming, and have a high drop out rate. due to this the samples are very small and can be harder to generalise to a larger population.