Role of the father

• Schaffer and Emerson found fathers are less likely to be the infant's primary attachment figure

  Mothers are attached to infants within the first 7 months

  75% of infants in Schaffer and Emerson's research attached to their fathers within 18 months

  
  

  This might be because fathers typically spend less time with their infants

  • However, Lamb(1997) could not find any research to support this
• Why are fathers not the primary attachment figure?

  • Female hormone Oestrogen underlies caring behaviour in women
  • Cultural expectations, women are expected to be more sensitive as this is "feminine" - women are expected to have a motherly role
  • Men are not psychologically equipped to form an intense attachment because they lack the emotional sensitivity of women
• Froedi et Al showed videos of infants crying & found their was no physiological difference in terms of the response of men & women.

  This study suggests men could be as emotionally sensitive as women
• Secondary role of fathers

  Fathers have a secondary role to their children

  • Grossman found fathers are more playful, physically active & better at helping their children through challenging situations
• Geiger said that mothers are more conventional & tend to participate in more nurturing tasks, such as reading stories to their children
• Arguably, the lack of sensitivity in fathers can be beneficial as it allows their children to develop problem solving abilities as their fathers give them greater communication & cognitive challenges
• A03 the role of the father

  Grossman supported the idea that the role of fathers in caregiving is more play based than nurture based

  He carried out a longitudinal, he looked at mother's and father's caregiving behaviour and the relationship between the quality of the child's attachment in adolescence

  They found that the quality of infants attachment with mothers, and NOT fathers, was linked to attachment in adolescence.

  However, the quality of fathers play in infancy was linked to the quality of attachment in adolescence

  supports men and women have different roles in caregiving
• A03 role of the father

  However, an issue with the claim by Grossman that fathers are only responsible for play is that if this were true, children raised without both a male and female caregiver would always be different in some way.

  However, research has found children that grow up in single or same-sex families do not develop any differently to children with a mother and father.

  This evidence 🧾 contradicts the idea that fathers have a different role in childhood