| Shaffer's and Emerson's evidence for fathers being important? | Found that fathers do become more important.
75% of babies formed an attachment to father after 18 months
Babies protested when the father walked away - sign of attachment |
| Grossman for fathers being important? | Found that quality of father's play with babies was related to adolescent attachments.
Suggests that father have a different role to mothers, more with play and stimulation rather than an emotional development. |
| Field for fathers being important? | Filmed 4 month old babies in face-to-face interation with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers and primary caregiver fathers.
Primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent more time holding and smiliing and imitating with babies more than secondary fathers.
Important for reciprocity and interactional synchrony, part of the attachment formation, potential to be more the emotional focused primary attachment figure - prodive responsivness requried for a close emotional attachment but perhaps only as the primary caregiver. |
| Shaffer and Emerson's evidence for fathers are not important? | Found that the majority of babies were attached to their mothers for the first 7 months.
Only 3% of the casses the father was the sole attachment object.
In 27% of the cases, the father was the first joint object with the mother. |
| Grossman's evidence for fathers are not important? | Logitudinal study, babies attachments were studied until their teens. Looked at both parents behaviour and the quality of attachment later with other people.
Quality of attachment in mothers but not fathers were related to attachments in adolescene. |
| McCallum and Golombok's evidence that fathers are less important? | Found that children growing up in single-parent or same-sex parent families do not develop any differently from those in two-parent heterosexual families, which suggests that father do not have a distincitve role in attachment.
So the father isn't as important as a mother, or overly important. |
| A strength of the role of the father as the parent? | -Used as advice
-Parents and parents-to-be can sometimes agnoise over decisiosn about who should take on the role of priamry caregiver, the mother may feel pressued to stay at home and do stereotypical roles
-Equally fathers may feel pressure to work, rather than focsuing on parenting, even though it may not be best for the economic situation
-Allows for heterosexual couples to be informed that fathers are capable for being the primary caregiver as well as inform single-mothers and lesbian couples that not having a father doesn't affect the child's development |
| A strength of the role of the father as a parent? | -Research support to provide evidence that fathers are a 'playmate' rather than a primary caregiver
-Geiger found that a fathers' play interactions were more exciting in comparision to a mothers'. However, the mothers' play interaction were more affectionate and nurturing
-This suggests that the role of the father is in fact as a playmate and not as a sensitive parent who responds to the needs of their children. These results confirm that the mother takes on a nuturing role
-Means there is a distinctive and important role for fathers as a 'playmate', but families such as a single-parent or a lesbian-parent family can accommodate the role of the playmate |
| A weakness of the role of the father as a parent? | -Reseracher's investiagtion could have been biassed due to the preconceptions
-Stereotypes such as 'father are stricter' or 'fathers are not primary caregivers' are often seen in advertising. It is possible that these stereotypical accounts and images of parenting roles and behaviours may cause unintentional observer bais
-Causes teh reserach to lack internal valditiy seeing as the results may be subject to the reserachers bias
-Researchers look for the results that they want to see rather than recording actual behaviour |
| A weakness of the role of the father as a parent? | -There is supporting research which suggests that father's aren't as biologically equipped as mothers to provide sensitive and nurturing attachments
-Hrdy found that fathers were less able to detect low levels of infant distress, in comparison to mothers
- These results appear to supprot the biological explanation that the lack of oestrogen in men means that fathers are not innately equipped to form close attachmnets with their children.
-Means that the role of the father, to some extent, is determined by their biology and that their role is resticted due to their makeup |
