The role of the father Flashcards
Who is the father in attachment research?
anyone who takes on the role of the main male caregiver. This can be but is not necessarily the biological father.
Why to infants turn to mothers?
to seek comfort and nurturing
Why do they turn to fathers?
for play
What do father do for infants?
Fathers excite children, encouraging them to take risks whilst still keeping them safe. This provides them with a secure environment to learn to be brave.
Grossman (2002) study and findings
Grossman (2002) carried out a longitudinal study looking at both parents’ behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens. Quality of infant attachment to mothers, but not fathers, was related to children’s attachments in adolescence, suggesting that father attachment was less important.
However, the quality of father’ play with infants was related to the quality of adolescent 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.
Why would mother and father roles be different?
It is possible that most men are just not psychologically equipped to form an intense attachment because they lack the emotional sensitivity that women offer. This may be due to biological or social factors. The fact that fathers do not become the primary attachment figures could simply be the result of 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 like that.
On the other hand, it could be that female hormones, such as oestrogen, create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically predisposed to be the primary attachment figure.
What does Schaffer and Emerson’s study say about the father figure?
Schaffer and Emerson found that the majority of babies did become attached to their mother first (around 7 months). Therefore, the primary attachment figure is much more likely to be the mother than the father. They found that within a few weeks or months of the primary attachment, the infants formed secondary attachments to other family members, including the father. In 75% of the infants studied, an attachment was formed with the father by the age of 18 months. This was determined by the fact that the infants protested when their father walked away (separation distress). Therefore, fathers are more likely to be secondary attachment figures.
What did Filed (1978) say about the role of the father?
There is some evidence that when fathers do take on the role of primary attachment figure, they adopt behaviours more typical of mothers. Field (1978) filmed 4-month-old babies in face-to-face interactions with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers and primary caregiver fathers. Primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers. This behaviour appears to be important in building an attachment with the infant.
Therefore, it seems that fathers can be the more nurturing attachment figure. They key to the attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent.
Real world application - advice and what it shows
The research on role of the father can be used to offer advice to parents. Parents and prospective parents sometimes agonise over decisions like who should take the primary caregiver role. Mothers may feel pressured to stay home because of stereotypical views about the roles of mothers and fathers. Equally, fathers may feel pressured to focus on work rather than parenting. In some families, this is not the best economical decision. Therefore the research can offer reassuring advice to parents. For example, heterosexual parents can be informed that fathers are quite capable of becoming primary attachment figures (Field’s research). Also, same-sex parents and single-mother families can be informed that not having a father around does not affect their child’s development as they can take on the nurturing and play roles.
This supports the external validity of the research because it can be used to reduce parental anxiety about the role of fathers.
Undermining the distinct roll of fathers and what it shows
Freeman et al. (2010) found that male children are more likely to prefer their father as an attachment figure than female children.
This would seem to suggest that fathers play a more distinct role in some attachments than others and so we can’t easily answer the question of: ‘what is the role of the father?’
Weakness of the distinct role of fathers
Research into the role of fathers in attachment is confusing because researchers who study them ask different research questions. Some are interested in understanding the role of fathers as secondary attachment figures whereas others are more concerned with the father as a primary attachment figure. The former have tended to see fathers behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role. The latter have tended to find that fathers can take on a ‘maternal’ role.
These inconsistent findings are a problem because it means that psychologists cannot easily answer the seemingly straightforward question of: ‘what is the role of the father?’
