Paternal Involvement and the Effect on Children

New research about a father's role in a child's life has surfaced with interesting results regarding the differences between paternal and maternal nurturing. A father plays an important part in their child's life and there is a link between father involvement and child-father attachment. Sometimes a child can feel closer to their father than their mother. Research studies show that self-asserting fathering and compensatory fathering are leading factors in these situations.

A study involving 236 families with children in kindergarten was done to examine the effects of parenting relations and attachment. A child responds more when paternal nurturing is involved with distress rather than the act of just being a warm, loving parent. When a father helps his child in a time of need, it will have more of an effect on the child than the father's overall warmth and comforting, which is virtually unrelated to any attachment issues.

Although less responsive parenting in both mothers and fathers is related to insecure attachment, parenting mechanisms associated with insecure attachment differed. Low paternal responsiveness is linked to insecure-avoidant attachment, and low maternal responsiveness is linked to insecure-ambivalent attachment. To understand why these differences occur, further research and studies are needed to examine the effects of paternal responsiveness.

With these studies, we see how a father plays an important part in a child's life in a more specific way and both parents are equally important in raising a child.