role of the father

• role of the father has changed over time, in the 1950s due to gender roles they were not emotionally or physically present and acted as bread winners. they had inequal roles to the mothers and gave more strict dicipline. now they are more emotionally involved, more present in the childs life, might stay home instead of mothers and act like role models
• what factors impact the relationship between fathers and their children?

  1. degree of sensitivity [more secure attachments are found in fathers who show more sensitivity to childrens needs]
  2. type of attachment with own parents [single parent fathers tend to form similar attachments to those they had with their father / parents]
  3. morital intimacy [the level of intimacy the father has within his relationship with his partner impacts the relationship with his children]
  4. supportive coparenting [the amount of support the father gives in caring for his child will determine the attachment formed]
• Bowlby 


  suggests that fathers can fill a role closesly resembling that filled by a mother but points out that in most cultures this ias uncommon. he argued tht in most families with young children, the fathers role tends to be different. according to Bowlby, a father is more likely to be engage in physically active and novel play than the mother and tends to become his childs preferred play companion
• Grossman 


  conducted a longitudinal study of 44 families comparing the role of fathers and mothers contribution to their childrens attachment experiences at 6, 10, and 16 years old. fathers play style was closesly linked to the fathers own internal working model of attachment. play sensitivity was a better predictor of the childs long term attachment representation than the early measures of the attachment type the infant had with their father
• Field

  conducted research which compared the behaviours of primary caretaker mothers with primary and secondary caretaker fathers. face to face interactions were analysed from video footage with infants at 4 months old. overall it was observed that fathers engaged more in game playing and held their infants less. however, primary caretaker fathers engaged in significantly more smiling, imitative graimaces, and imitative vocalisations than did secondary caretaker fathers and these were comparable with mothers behaviours
• Brown et al


  investigated father involvement, paternal sensitivity and father child attachment security at 13 months and 3 years of age. results demonstrated that involvemment and sensitivity influenced father - child attachment security at age 3. involvement was a greater predictor of secure attachment when fathers were rated as less sensitive
• Brown and Field 


  indicated that the gender of a caregiver is not crucical in predicting attachment types / quality, rather it is the extend of caregiver involvement
• Geiger

  he showed that fathers interactions with their children was more exciting and playful than mothers interactions with their children. mothers were more nurturing and affectionate with their children, which supports the idea that fathers act more like playmates than caregivers
• Lamb


  Lamb found that children preferred their fathers when they were happy and in a good mood, however, they preferred their mothers when they were emotionally distressed. this supports the idea of fathers being preferred as playmates.