Role of father

• Grossman

  • longitudinal study looking at both parents’ behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachment into their teens
  • The quality of infants’ attachment with their mothers, but not their fathers, was related to the childrens’ attachments in adolescence.
  • suggesting that the father’s attachment is less important than the mothers
• finding2

  the quality of fathers play with infants was related to the quality the children's’ adolescent attachments.

  This suggests fathers have a different role in attachment- one that is more to do with play and stimulation and less to do with nurturing, but is still important for the child’s wellbeing.