Attachment - The Role of the Father Flashcards
Do babies form primary attachments with fathers?
Schaffer and Emerson (1964) 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.
Do babies form secondary attachments with fathers?
In 75% of infants studied, an attachment was formed with the father by the age of 18 months (secondary attachments).
This was indicated by the fact the infants protested when their father walked away, a sign of attachment.
What do attachments with the mother most relate to?
Attachment with mother most related to teen attachments.
Grossmann (2002) carried out a longitudinal study looking at parents’ behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens.
This research found that the quality of attachment with the father was less important in the attachment type of teenagers than the quality of attachment with the mother. Therefore fathers may be less important in long-term emotional development.
What role in attachment do fathers have?
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.
Can fathers be primary caregivers?
Some evidence suggests that when fathers do take on the role of being the main caregiver, they adopt behaviours more typical of mothers.
Field (1978) 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.
What is the key to the attachment relationship?
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.
What are the strengths of research into the role of the father?
- important economic implications
What are the weaknesses of research into the role of the father?
- researchers are interested in different research questions
- evidence undermines the idea of fathers having distinct roles
- research fails to provide a clear answer about fathers and primary attachments
- social biases prevent objective observation
How does this research have important economic implications?
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.
How are researchers interested in different research questions?
Some psychologists want to understand the role of fathers as secondary attachment figures. But 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’.
This is a limitation because it means psychologists cannot easily answer the simple question: what is the role of the father?
What evidence undermines the idea of fathers having distinct roles?
Grossmann (2002) found that fathers as secondary attachment figures had an important and distinct role in their children’s development, involving play and stimulation.
Other studies (e.g. McCallum and Golombok 2004) 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.
How does research fail 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.
What 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.
