Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

demonstrate achievements – ‘Go on,showGrandad how you dance to Bob theBuilder’s music’); the use of pet names –perhaps these are an indicator of‘snuggling in’ and of intimacy; and thirdly,respect for rituals devised by the child (forexample, s/he always likes Big Ted/an oldsock,etc in bed; we always look out of thewindow at the sky and sing a special songbefore s/he goes to bed).So although,like Boyd Webb’s research,many projects may have been carried outin families with two heterosexual parents,it is still possible in some cases to reflecton the findings by viewing the findingsabout the adult roles as indicative of‘mothering/fathering/parenting’ rather thanas specific. It is still important however,to recognise that mothers and fathersmay behave differently because they livein a gendered society.Children’s relationships with their fatherswere the focus of a number of studies.Examining the factors that influence thefather-baby relationship during the firsttwo months of life, Anderson (1996)discovered the powerful role of the baby’smother in either including or excludingthe father’s involvement in infant care.Fathers’ attitudes and the amount of timethey are actually able to spend with theirbabies are also key ingredients in theextent to which they are able to formattachments (Cox and Margand 1992).In another study by Belsky (1996), he setup a Strange Situation with father and sonparticipants. He found that the fathers ofinfants who were securely attached tothem had particular characteristics incommon. According to Belsky they tendedto be more extrovert, agreeable, havehappier marriages and more positiveemotional work-home contexts thanfathers of insecurely attached babies.A meta-analysis of available studies byFox et al (1991) indicates that attachmentto one parent is indicative of attachmentto the other in two parent families.Na ka m u ra et al (2000) found that fathersin their study sco red lower than motherson a scale concerned with fosteringchildren’s cognitive development.Grych and Cl a rk (1999) found that fat h e r s’interactions with their babies differedd e pending on whether or not the motherswo rked full time. Fathers whose part n e r sworked part-time or who were notemployed outside the home were foundto be more sensitive and to show morepositive behaviours towards the infants.Babies from 77 families were observed atfo u r, 12 and 13 months old by Bra u n g a rt etal’s (1999) team in order to assess motherandfather-infant attachment. They foundthat boys from dual-earner families werelikely to be strongly attached to theirmothers but not to their fathers at fourmonths, compared with babies from otherfamily types, but these fathers were alsolikely to be less sensitive and to report lessmarital affection at this time.In an intervention study, Cullen et al(2000) found that encouraging fathersto massage their babies for 15 minutesbefore bedtime for one month enhancedtheir relationships to the extent that the57