The role of the father

• who is primary attachment usually with?

  mothers, but sometimes both.
• Schaffer and Emerson found that the majority of babies became attached to their mother first (this happens around 7 months). in only 3% of cases, the father was the first sole object of attachment. in 27% of cases, the father was the joint first object of attachment with the mother. within a few weeks or months they then formed secondary attachments to other family members, including the father.
• when does primary attachment usually happen?

  around 7 months.
• in 75% of infants studied an attachment was formed with the father by the age of 18 months. this was indicated by the fact the infants protested when their father walked away, a sign of attachment.
• grossman's longitudinal study looking at parents' behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children's attachments into their teens:

  • found that quality of attachment with the father was less important in the attachment type of the teenagers than quality of attachment with the mother.
  • therefore fathers may be less important in long-term emotional development.
• the quality of fathers' play with 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.
• some evidence suggests that when fathers do take on the role of being the main caregiver they adopt behaviours more typical of mothers
• study to support that fathers can be primary caregivers

  field filmed 4-month-old babies and found that primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers.
• level of response is most important

  smiling, imitating and holding infants are behaviours that appear to be important in building an attachment with an infant.

  so it seems the father can be the more nurturing attachment figure.

  the key to the attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness not the gender of the parent.
• economic implications of this research

  mothers feel pressured to stay at home because of research that says mothers are vital for healthy emotional development. in some families this may not be economically the best solution- for them or our society in general. this research may be of comfort to mothers who feel they have to make hard choices about not returning to work.
• limitation of this research: social biases prevent objective observation

  preconceptions about how fathers behave are created by common discussions about mothers' and fathers' parenting behaviour. these stereotypes (e.g. fathers are more playful, stricter etc.) may cause unintentional observer bias whereby observers see what they expect rather than recording actual reality. as such, conclusions on the role of the father in attachment are hard to disentangle from social biases about their role.
• limitation of this research: fails to provide a clear answer about fathers and primary attachments

  the answer could be related to traditional gender roles, in which women are expected to be more caring and nurturing than men. therefore, fathers simply don't feel they should act in a nurturing way. or, it could be that female hormones (e.g. oestrogen) create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically predisposed to be primary attachment figures.
• limitation: undermines the idea of fathers having distinct roles

  Grossman found that fathers as secondary attachment figures has an important and distinct role in their children's development, involving play and stimulation. however, other studies (e.g. mccallum and golombok) found that children growing up in single or same-sex parent families don't develop differently from those in two-parent families. this suggests that the father's role as a secondary attachment figure is not important.