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The role of the father as the object of the child's attachment
Zlatka Cugmas
Full text (pdf) | Views: 25 | Written in Slovene. | Published: September 1, 2001
Abstract: The theory of attachment does consider the possibility of the child developing attachment toward other people, e.g., the father or the grandmother, however, it assigns the primary role of the object of attachment to the mother. The main issue of this contribution is to answer the following questions on the basis of studying literature on attachment: can the father be the object of attachment; is he in this role equally important as the mother; can the child's anxious attachment to the mother be replaced with a secure attachment to the father; and does the amount of time the father spends with the child play an important role in the development of the child's attachment toward him. Five criteria developed by Ijzendoorn, Sagi and Lambermon (1992) to test whether caregivers are objects of the child's attachment. I found (i) that fathers can be objects of attachment, however, their influence on the child's later social-emotional development differs in quality from the influence of the mother, (ii) that a compensation of the child's anxious attachment to the mother with a secure attachment to the father is possible, but not complete, and (iii) that the impact of the time the father spends with the child on the child's attachment is more dependent on other factors, such as the mother's occupation. In future research it would be necessary to control the role of the child's sex, the culture he/she lives in and related factors.
Keywords: father, attachment criteria, time for nurturing the child
