role of father

• Most attachment research has focused on mother and baby attachment, and the role of the father in the development of attachment has often been neglected
• There is research on the specific roles that fathers play in development
• Father


  A child's closest male caregiver
• Attachment to fathers

  • Babies are much less likely to become attached to their father compared to their mother
  • 75% of babies studied formed an attachment with their father by 18 months
• Quality of a baby's attachment with mothers


  Related to attachments in adolescence
• Quality of fathers' play with babies


  Related to the quality of adolescent attachments
• Primary attachment figure

  A baby's primary attachment has special emotional significance and forms the basis of all later close emotional relationships
• When fathers take on the role of primary caregiver they are able to adopt the emotional role more typically associated with mothers
• Behaviours of primary caregiver fathers

  • Spending more time smiling, imitating and holding babies compared to secondary caregiver fathers
• Fathers have the potential to be the more emotion-focused primary attachment figure and provide the responsiveness required for a close emotional attachment
• Researchers attempting to answer this question

  • Some want to understand the role of fathers as secondary attachment figures
  • Others are more concerned with fathers as a primary attachment figure
• The former have tended to see fathers as behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role
• The latter have found that fathers can take on a 'maternal' role
• Longitudinal studies


  • Suggested that fathers as secondary attachment figures have an important and distinct role in their children's development, involving play and stimulation
• If fathers have a distinctive and important role we would expect that children growing up in single-mother and lesbian-parent families would turn out in some way different from those in two-parent heterosexual families
• Studies consistently show that these children do not develop differently from children in two-parent heterosexual families
• It 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
• This means that the 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
• Research into the role of the father can be used to offer reassuring advice to parents
• Heterosexual parents can be informed that fathers are quite capable of becoming primary attachment figures
• Lesbian-parent and single-mother families can be informed that not having a father around does not affect a child's development
• This means that parental anxiety about the role of fathers can be reduced
• strength

  • field (1978)
  • observed primary caretaker mothers, primary caretaker fathers, and secondary caretaker fathers interacting with their 4-month old infants
  • found that fathers (in general) focused more on game playing and less on holding
  • also found the primary caretaker fathers showed more sensitively responsive behaviour, similar to mothers- e.g. they used more smiling and child-directed speech than secondary caretaker fathers
• strength

  • verissimo (2011)
  • observed preschool children's relationships with their mothers and fathers
  • later conducted a follow-up assessment of social interactions when the child started nursery
  • a strong attachment to the father was the best predictor of the ability to make friends in school, suggesting an important role for fathers in socialisation
• limitation

  • research on the role of father is socially sensitive
  • research that argues the role of the mother cannot be replaced by the father may lead to father single led families and families with two fathers feeling that they cannot fully provide for the needs of their infants
  • but research that suggests father's can provide that role may give all father's the confidence to take a more active role in their childs caregiving
• strength/limitation

  • there are economic implications to research assessing the importance of the father's role
  • this could lead to legislation that ensures equal paternity and maternity leave
  • while this may reduce the number of males in the workforce, reduce economic activity, and place pressure on businesses, equalising maternity and paternity leave should help address the gender pay gap, which is in part due to the need to extend absences by mothers caring for their infants