Young children’s representation of people who are elsewhere—Or dead

Given the legacy of John Bowlby, Attachment theory has often portrayed separation from a caregiver as likely to provoke protest, despair, and ultimately detachment in infants and young children. Indeed, the emotional challenge of separation is built into a key measurement tool of Attachment theory, the Strange Situation. However, James Robertson, one of Bowlby’s leading collaborators, voiced dissent. He argued that young children can cope with separations—even when they last for several days or weeks. They are able to keep the absent person in mind provided an alternative, familiar caregiver remains available. Observational and experimental findings lend support to Robertson’s claim. Recent analyses of natural language provide further support. Although young toddlers (ranging from 20 to 26 months) often make contact- or attachment-related comments about absent caregivers, such comments become less frequent with age whereas reflective references to absent caregivers—comments that do not express contact-related concerns about their absence—are often produced by young toddlers and remain frequent throughout early childhood. Children’s early-emerging ability to keep an absent attachment figure in mind raises intriguing questions about their responses to the permanent absence of an attachment figure—as in the case of death. Consistent with contemporary research showing that many grieving adults report continuing bonds to a deceased attachment figure—rather than a gradual process of emotional detachment—children also report such continuing bonds. By implication, children and adults are prone to construe the death of a loved one not just as a biological endpoint that terminates the possibility of any continuing relationship but instead as a departure that can be bridged by a continuation of the earlier bond in an altered form.

Field Dependence, Language Ability, and Self-Concept as a Function of Fathers' Absence

Children whose fathers were absent for at least 6 months during their first five years of life were more field-dependent and less able to identify correctly changes in subject-object relations in sentence transformations than children whose fathers had not been absent. The 44 children in each group were matched for sex, race, parents' occupations, and education. Mean scores on verbal intelligence for the two groups were not significantly different. There was no difference between the two groups on a measure of self-concept.

Interactions between Two-Year-Olds and Their Mothers and Fathers

The effects of stress on the parental preferences of 2-yr.-olds were investigated. In a stress-free situation, children showed no preference for either parent. Children responded similarly to separation from and reunion with each parent. After a series of stressful separations, there was still no apparent preference for either parent.

Child Care in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Implications for the Future Organization of Child Care in the United States

In every society care of children is primarily a female responsibility, yet there is still tremendous cross-cultural variation in the organization of child care. Three characteristics of child care in small-scale traditional agrarian societies are discussed: role integration, use of auxiliary caregivers, and the effects of certain ecological patterns on childrearing. Data concerning each of these points is presented, along with implications for the future organization of child care in our own society. These implications are based on, first, the assumption of adaptive-ness in forms of child care organization that have evolved over periods of time in these relatively stable societies, and, secondly, on the notion that concepts of child care that work in other societies can, in many cases, be adapted to current conditions in the United States.

Fathers' role in the etiology, prevention and treatment of child anxiety: A review and new model

Fathers have been neglected in investigations of the development, prevention, and treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. This review provides a historical background of what is known about fathers' roles in the etiology of anxiety problems and provides evidence from bottom-up, top-down, and cross-sectional correlation studies of the connections between fathers' and their children's anxiety. Treatment and prevention programs are discussed in terms of the limited findings regarding fathers' involvement in treatment for children's and adolescents' anxiety problems. Finally, a model is presented to show the unique ways in which mothers and fathers are involved in the development of anxiety disorders in their children. Future directions for research in this area are highlighted.

Father involvement moderates the effect of maternal depression during a child's infancy on child behavior problems in kindergarten

This research investigated whether father involvement in infancy may reduce or exacerbate the well-established adverse effect of maternal depression during a child's infancy on behavior problems in childhood. In a community sample (N = 350), the authors found that fathers' self-reported parenting styles interacted with the amount of time fathers spent caring for their infants to moderate the longitudinal effect of maternal depression during the child's infancy on children's internalizing, but not externalizing, behaviors. Low to medium amounts of high-warmth father involvement and high amounts of medium- or high-control father involvement at this time were associated with lower child internalizing behaviors. Paternal depression during a child's infancy exacerbated the effect of maternal depression, but this moderating effect was limited to depressed fathers spending medium to high amounts of time caring for their infants. Results emphasize the moderating role fathers may play in reducing or exacerbating the adverse long-term effects of maternal depression during a child's infancy on later child behavior problems.

Father involvement in infant care: two longitudinal studies

Data collected from two samples of fathers in separate longitudinal studies were compared. One sample consisted of 53 first-time fathers and the other of 69 multiple-time fathers. A post-test only time-series design was used for both studies, and both employed the same procedures and instruments. The studies examined role enactment of fathers with different child-caring experiences using role-theory concepts. Fathers' normative expectations, personal expectations, and personal learning about parenting were tested to determine if they were predictive of paternal role performance. The findings seem to indicate that the culture of fatherhood has changed more rapidly than the conduct of fatherhood.

Father participation in child care: a critical review

Nurses have provided much of the impetus for including fathers in perinatal activities during the last decade. Little is known, however, about what happens to father participation in child care after the family leaves the hospital. The major difficulty in interpreting father participation research is that no two studies use the same definition or measure of father participation. Findings are therefore, difficult to integrate into a meaningful conceptual framework which could guide practice. The purpose of this paper is to review past studies of father participation, extract the definitions of father participation implied by the measures used, discuss the methodological problems of measuring father participation, and develop guidelines for future measures that might advance this body of research.

Nursing care for the emerging family: promoting paternal behavior

In the last decade, nursing care related to childbirth has expanded from a narrow emphasis on the physical health needs of the mother and infant to a broader focus on more family-related, socioemotional needs. One prominent feature of this family-centered approach is the recent movement toward designing services to promote the formation of the mother-infant attachment bond. It is argued in this paper, however, that to achieve a truly family-centered practice, nursing must make a comparable commitment to understanding and meeting the needs of the father in the emerging family. Evidence is reviewed that suggests the father's potential contribution to the infant's overall development has been misperceived or devalued and that the father's ability and willingness to assume a more active role in the infant's care may have been underestimated. Questions for future research that would lead to a better understanding of the father's role in the emerging family are raised.

The child's tie to both parents: separation patterns and nursery school adjustment

The three-year-old's mode of expressing separation distress, observed during nursery school adaptation, was explored in relation to parental child-care styles. The father-child relationship and the nature of parental differences were associated with the quality of nursery school adjustment, as illustrated by case reports. Implications for a broad conceptualization of parental functioning are discussed within the context of relevant literature.

Separation and reunion behaviors as criteria of attachment to mothers and fathers

Twenty infants were observed 4 times between 7 and 13 months of age in a short-term longitudinal study. Responses to separations from and reunions with mothers and fathers are reported. None of the measures showed a preference for either parent at any age. Other studies confirm that even young infants are attached to both parents. It is argued that greater attention must be paid to the family's role in social and personality development.

Parent-infant interaction in 8-month-olds

Twenty 8-month-olds were observed interacting with their parents in a structured laboratory situation. Their responses to separations from each parent and the entrance of a strange adult were recorded. These events did not result in the predicted intensification of parental preferences. Before and after the "stressors," infants showed slight and equivocal preferences for their mothers over their fathers. Implications are briefly described.

Infant reaction to parental separations when left with familiar and unfamiliar adults

The results of two experiments examining infants at 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, and 21 months of age and varying levels of father interaction are summarized to show that separation protest is more a function of a strange person remaining in an unfamiliar laboratory situation with the infant than the temporary loss of a specific parent. The use of protest as an index of infant-parent attachment seems undesirable.

The sociability of two-year-olds with their mothers and fathers

Twenty-one two-year-olds were observed interacting with their parents in a laboratory playroom. Previously reported analyses had found that they displayes no preferencd for interaction with either parent. The present analysis found that there was a high degree of correlation between the sociability of the cild with his mother and his sociability with his father. Possible implications of this finding are discussed.