The Role Of Fathers Flashcards
What are the two different roles that the father can play:
1: Role in play and stimulation
2: Primary caregiver and nurturing attachment figure
Who experimented the role of fathers in play and stimulation?
Grossman (2002)
What did Grossman do?
He carried out a longitudinal study, looking at the influence of parental behaviour on attachment.
The quality of father’s play with infants and not their security of attachment with the infant meant better adolescent attachments with the father.
This suggests rather than a nurturing role, is more centred around play and stimulation in order for a strong attachment to form between them during adolescence.
Who experimented the primary caregiver and nurturing attachment figure?
Field (1978)
What did Field do?
Observed 4-month-old infants in face-face interactions with their primary caregiver fathers or mothers or secondary caregivers fathers.
Primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent longer smiling, imitating and holding infant than secondary caregiver fathers.
This suggests father’s role can be more centred around nurturing just like mothers.
A strength of our understanding of the role of the father in forming attachment is the practical applications to real life.
Research indicated that infants form attachments to fathers during early development which suggests rearing responsibilities can be divided evenly between the mother and father.
This allows mothers to return to work more quickly after giving birth and gives the father a more significant role rearing infants during early life.
This means more societies are providing fathers with paternity leave after birth.
For example, in Sweden, fathers get 90 days paid paternity to leave to allow them time to assist with childcare.
Strength bc it grants families flexibility in terms of work responsibilities and childcare responsibilities.
Thus our understanding increases in utility
A weakness of our understanding of the role of the father is that there is refuting evidence regarding the significance of the father role.
MacCallum and Golombok (2004) have found that children growing in a single (mother only) or same sex parent family (led by two females) may not develop differently from those in two- parent heterosexual families.
Weakness bc it suggests that the father only plays a ‘minimal role’ in the development of a child - and thus is only a secondary attachment.
A weakness of our understanding of the role of the father is that it is refuted by the learning theory.
According to the learning theory, attachment energies due to the infant forming an association between the mother and the pleasure derived from feeding. When infants are young they are often breastfed and fathers play no real part in this process.
Weakness bc it suggests that the father’s role is not critical in the development of attachment in an infant.
Decreases the validity of our understanding into the role of the father.
