role of father

• what was Grossman study for role of the father ?

  • a longitudinal study which looked at babies until they were teens 
  • Attachment to mothers was found to be related to attachments in adolescence 
  • Fathers play with babies was related to quality of attachment in adolescence 
  • Fathers role is play , mothers is emotional development
• what was field study for role of the father?

  • Field filmed 4 month old babies face to face with PCM, SCF and PCF
  • PCF acted like the PCM and was smiling and imitating the baby more than the SCF
  • Fathers can provide response for an emotional attachment  
• Confusion over research question - One limitation of research into the role of fathers ?

  lack of clarity over question asked. 'What is role of father?' is more complicated than it sounds. Some researchers attempting to answer this question want to understand role of fathers as secondary attachment figures. But others more concerned with fathers as a primary attachment figure. former have tended to see fathers as behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role. latter found fathers can take on a 'maternal' role. so difficult to offer a simple answer as to 'role of father. depends what specific role discussed.
• Conflicting evidence - further limitation of research into the role of fathers?

  findings vary according to methodology used.Longitudinal studies such as that of Grossmann et al. suggested that fathers as secondary attachment figures have an important and distinct role in children's development, (play & stimulation.)However, if fathers have distinctive & important role we'd expect children growing up in single-mother & lesbian-parent families would turn out different from those in two-parent heterosexual families. In fact studies (e.g. McCallum and Golombok 2004) consistently show that these children don't develop differently from children in two-parent heterosexual families.so question as to whether fathers have a distinctive role remains unanswered.
• Counter ?

  These lines of research may not in fact be in conflict.could be that fathers typically take on distinctive roles in two-parent heterosexual families, but that parents in single-mother and lesbian-parent families simply adapt to accommodate the role played by fathers.so question of a distinctive role for fathers is clear after all. When present, fathers tend to adopt a distinctive role, but families can adapt to not having a father.
• Real world application - One strength of research into the role of the father ?

  can offer advice to parents.Parents sometimes agonise over decisions like who should take on the primary caregiver role. can even mean worrying about whether to have children at all. Mothers may feel pressured to stay at home due to stereotypical views of mothers' and fathers' roles. fathers pressured to work rather than parent. In some families may not be economically best solution. Research can be used to offer reassuring advice to parents. so parental anxiety about the role of fathers can be reduced.
• what did Schaffer and Emerson find?

  -majority of babies first attached to mums at 7 months

  -in 3% of cases fathers was first sole object of attachment

  -27% father was joint first object of attachment with mother

  -75% of babies became attached to father by 18 months