Role of the Father

Question 1

Intro

Answer 1

• Most early attachment research focused on the mother despite some research suggesting the importance of fathers
• This led to some uncertainty of the role of the father
• This led to different roles being suggested

Question 2

What was Grossman’s study?

Answer 2

• Grossman carried out a longitudinal study looking at the influence of parental behaviour on attachment
• He found that the quality of fathers’ play with infants and NOT their security of attachment with the infant was related to the quality of adolescent attachments with the father
• This suggests that the father’s role is not to do with nurturing the infant and establishing a secure bond but rather related to play and stimulation in order for attachment to the child to occur

Question 3

What was Field’s study?

Answer 3

• Field observed 4 month old infants in face to face interactions with their primary caregiver fathers or mothers or secondary caregiver fathers
• Primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent longer smiling, imitating, holding infant than secondary caregiver fathers
• This suggests that the father’s role can also be centered around nurturing just like the mother’s role

Question 4

What is a strength?

Answer 4

• One strength of our understanding is that there are practical applications
• Research indicating that infants often form attachments to fathers during early development suggests that rearing responsibilities can be divided more evenly between the mother and father
• Thus allows working mothers to return to work more quickly after giving birth and gives the father a more significant role in rearing infants
• To aid this process more and more societies are providing fathers with paternity leave after birth e.g. in Sweden, fathers get 90 days paid paternity leave to allow them to assist with childcare
• This is a strength because it shows that research into the role of the father has practical use in terms of giving more flexibility to families in employment and childcare
• Thus it increases in utility

Question 5

How do MacCallum and Golombok weaken our understanding?

Answer 5

• A weakness is that there’s refuting evidence for the fathers influence in the child’s development-
• MacCallum and Golombok found that the children growing up in a single or same-sex parent family (i.e. one or two females) may not develop differently from those in two parent heterosexual families (with fathers in them)
• This suggests that the role of the father as an attachment figure is not as significant as once believed but rather, fathers only provide secondary attachments
• This decreases the validity of our understanding

Question 6

How does Learning Theory weaken our understanding?

Answer 6

• A weakness is that it refuted by Learning Theory
• According to Learning Theory, attachment emerges due to infants forming an association between the mother and the pleasure derived from feeding
• When infants are very young they are often brestfed - a process fathers play no real part in.
• This is a weakness because it suggests that the father’s role is minimal in attachment
• Thus it’s clear that our understanding may have exaggerated the role of the father and so it decreases in validity