ATTACHMENT: The Role Of The Father

Question 1

What does Grossman (2002) say about the role of the father?

Answer 1

• the role of the father is to play with the child

He conducted a study of 44 families comparing the role of the fathers and mothers and their contribution to their children’s attachment experiences at age 6, 10, and 16 years.

• he found that the quality of children’s attachment with mothers were related to the child’s attachment in adolescence
• but the fathers were found to less important but the quality of their play did have an influence

Question 2

What did field 1978 say about the role of the father

Answer 2

He conducted a research comparing the behaviors of the primary caregivers (mothers) and secondary caregivers (Fathers)

• face to face interactions were analyzed from video footage with infants at 4 months of age.
• fathers engaged more in game playing and held their infants less
• but primary caregiver fathers engaged in more smiling and imitative grimaces, and imitative vocalizations that the secondary caretaker fathers, these were comparable to the mothers.
• so there is evidence to suggest when father take the role of main caregivers, they adopt characteristics typical of mothers.
• key to attachments is the level of responsiveness not gender

Question 3

What did Schaffer and Emerson (1964) say about the role of the father

Answer 3

Traditionally the father doesn’t spend time as much time with the children due to being the main financial earner for the family as the mother stayed at home

• they found that the father was the primary attachment figure in only 3% of families
• by 18 months of age 75% of infants had formed an attachment their father (demonstrated by the fact that the infants protested when their father walked away
• while fathers are rarely the primary attachment figure
• most babies form a significant attachment at a later time (18 months)

Question 4

Evaluations

Answer 4

(-) inconsistent findings on fathers
- research into the role of fathers are confusing because some research focus on fathers as a primary caregiver and some focus on them as secondary caregivers
- the primary caregiver research tends to find that they can take on a maternal role, whereas secondary caregiver research behave differently from mothers
- psychologists can’t easily establish what the role of the father actually is

(-) if fathers are important, why aren’t children without fathers different?
- despite Grossmans research on the importance of fathers interaction with their child, other studies have found that children growing up in same sex or single parent families don’t developlope any differently

(-) fathers may just not want to take the care giver role as they face discrimination, or it could be that females are more biologically tuned to be nurturing and caring

(-) socially sensitive research