The development and significance of father-child relationships in two-parent families.

Abstract

In this chapter the authors review current research on the nature and importance of father-child relationships. They begin by describing the factors that influence father-child interactions and relationships, noting that men's interactions with their children need to be understood within a network of family relationships. Studies of infants and young children have predominated, and these thus continue to dominate our examination, in the second section, of studies concerned with the characteristics of father-child relationships, including the amount of time that fathers spend with their children and differences between maternal and paternal styles of interaction. In the third section the authors examine fathers' responses to parenthood and to their infants, the processes by which infants become attached to their parents, and differences in the nature and impact of mother- and father-child relationships. Changes in the nature of relationships between children and their parents in childhood and adolescence are discussed in the final substantive section. Here, they describe the mechanisms by which parent-child relationships are gradually transformed over this period and the roles that fathers play in the lives and socialization of their adolescent sons and daughters. Throughout the chapter they discuss both normative issues and the factors that distinguish individual parent-child relationships from one another. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)