Attachment figures

• Attachment figures

  Parent-infant attachment

  Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found majority of babies become attached to mother first and in a few weeks or months, form secondary attachments to other family members (father). 75% formed attachment w/ father by 18 months (protested when walked away).
• Attachment figures

  The role of the father

  Grossman (2002) carried out longitudinal study and found that quality of infant attachment w/ mothers but not fathers related to children's attachments in adolescence, suggesting father attachment was less important. But quality of father's play was related to quality of adolescence attachments. Suggests role to do w/ play and stimulation in attachment, less to do w/ nurturing.
• Attachment figures

  Fathers as primary carers.

  Tiffany Field (1978) filmed 4-month-old babies in face-to-face interaction w/ PCG, SCG fathers and PCG fathers. PCG fathers, like mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than SCG fathers. Seems father can be the more nurturing attachment figure. Key to attachment relationship = level of responsiveness not gender of parent.
• Attachment figures- evaluation

  Study by Grossman found that fathers as secondary attachment figures had important role in children's development. But other studies (MacCallum and Golombok 2004) found that children growing up in single or same-sex parent families do not develop any differently from those in two-parent heterosexual families. Suggests father's role as secondary attachment not important.
• Attachment figures- evaluation 2

  Fathers not tending to be primary attachment figure could be the result of traditional gender roles in which women are expected to be more nurturing than men. Or could be that female hormones (oestrogen) create higher levels of nurturing and therefore are biologically pre-disposed to be primary attachment figure (Taylor et al. 2000).