AO1

• Traditionally we have always looked

  -at mother-child interactions and often research excluded the role of the father
• Schaffer and Emerson found

  -75% of babies formed an attachment with their fathers by the age of 18 months.
• Grossman (2002) conducted

  -looking at parents’ behaviour and its relationship to the quality of the child’s attachment into their teen years.
• The quality of attachment with...

  -the mother was important, but the quality of the fathers was not, this could suggest that the father’s behaviour was less important
• therefore

  -may be less important in long-term emotional development.
• Grossman also found that the quality of the father's..

  -play with the infants was related to children’s attachments.
• This suggests that

  -fathers have a different role in attachment, one that is more to do with play and stimulation and less to do with nurturing.
• There is some evidence to suggest

  -when fathers take on the role of primary caregiver, they adopt the behaviours more typically seen in mothers
• Field investigated

  -he reactions of infants to fathers who were primary caregivers and compared to the interactions of infants with fathers who were not primary care givers
• It was found that

  -primary caregiving fathers (like primary care giving mothers) spent more time interacting, smiling, imitating and holding infants
• It would seem that the..

  -key attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent.