Outline & evaluate the role of the father in the development of attachment [16]
AO1:
● Traditionally fathers have played a minor role in child rearing as they would go to work and provide
resources while mothers took care of the children. Although this has changed, psychologists still
disagree over the exact role of the father.
● Some researchers argue that men aren’t equipped to form attachments and they point to the biological
evidence which suggests that the hormone oestrogen which evokes caring behaviour in women and
lack of oestrogen in men is why they’re less nurturing and unable to form a close bond with the child.
● There are cultural and social expectations that view child rearing as stereotypically feminine. This may
deter males taking on a child rearing role, even if they want to
● Schaffer and Emerson did find that infants attach to their fathers. However they first attach to their
mothers and then form a secondary attachment with fathers as by 18 months 75% of the infants
observed had formed a secondary attachment to the father
● Fathers are seen as playmates and therefore have a different role in attachment
● However, some argue that fathers are demonstrate sensitive responsiveness as primary caregiver
mothers & thus are capable of becoming primary caregivers, forming strong attachment with their child
AO3:
★ One strength is that there’s research to support the idea of fathers having a distinctive role in
development. For example, Grossman et al. conducted a longitudinal study, looking at parent’s
behaviour and its relationship to the quality of their infant’s later attachments. Quality of the infants’
attachment with their mother was linked to children’s attachment in adolescence. However, the quantity
of father’s play with their infants was related to the quality of adolescent attachments. This therefore
suggests that fathers have a role more to do with play and stimulation rather than nurturing and
emotional development. Longitudinal studies observe variables over extended periods of time, so
researchers can use their data to study developmental shifts and understand how certain things
change such as attachment formation. Longitudinal studies are also costly and time consuming as they
can take months or years to complete, rendering them expensive and time-consuming. Because of this,
researchers tend to have difficulty recruiting participants, leading to smaller sample sizes. Not only is it
a struggle to recruit participants, but subjects also tend to leave or drop out of the study due to various
reasons such as illness, relocation, or a lack of motivation to complete the full study which thus
threatens the validity of an experiment.
★ However, there’s research to support fathers as primary caregivers which suggests that when they are
the primary caregivers they often adopt the emotional role more typically of mothers. For example,
Field at al. observed face-to-face interactions between infants and primary caregiver mothers, primary
caregiver fathers and secondary caregivers fathers. They found that primary caregiver fathers spent
more time like mothers, holding, smiling and imitating than secondary caregiver fathers. This shows
that fathers can be more nurturing and that gender is not key but rather the level of responsiveness
★ However, Taylor et al found that female hormones such as oestrogen create higher levels of nurturing
and therefore women are biologically predisposed to be the primary attachment figure. However, this
explanation suffers from biological determinism as fathers can be more nurturing and take on the role
of the primary caregiver as seen by research such as that of Field et al
★ Another limitation is the number of contradicting evidence. Longitudinal studies such as that of
Grossman et al. have suggested that fathers are secondary attachment figures and have an important
and distinct role in children’s development [playmate]. Therefore, we would expect that children
growing up in single mother and lesbian parent families to turn out different in some way. However,
McCallum & Golombook found that this isn’t the case. This is therefore a limitation as it means that the
question as to whether fathers have a distinctive role remains unanswered
★ Real world application = One strength of research into the role of the father is that it can be used to
offer advice to parents. Agonising decisions over roles can cause a lot of pressure and confusion, to
the point where prospective parents could start considering whether or not to have a child at all.
Therefore, research can be used to offer reassuring advice to parents. E.g fathers are capable of
becoming primary attachment figure & also not having a father around doesn’t affect a child’s
development
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