role of the father

Question 1

What did Schaffer and Emmerson find about attachment to fathers?

Answer 1

• Schaffer and Emerson found that 75% of the infants in their study formed a secondary attachment to their father by the age of 18 months
• 29% within a month of forming a primary attachment demonstrated by separation anxiety.
• suggests the father is important, but unlikely to be the first person to which the child develops an attachment to.

Question 2

what did Tiffany Field observe?

Answer 2

• interactions between infants and their primary
  caregiver

Question 3

what did Field find?

Answer 3

• primary caregivers, regardless of gender, were more attentive towards the infant and spent more time holding and smiling at them.
• This suggests that although mothers are often expected to become primary attachment figures, this does not always have to be the case

Question 4

what is there still a lack of agreemant over?

Answer 4

the extent of the influence of the father as a primary
attachment figure.

Question 5

what did MacCallum and Golombok demonstrate

Answer 5

children growing up in homosexual or single-parent families were not different compared to children with two heterosexual parents.