Here is a summarised note form of Role of the Father. I have more detailed notes if you want them let me know.
Multiple Attachments and the Role of the Father
Contribution of fathers
Schaffer and Emerson – One third of the infants preferred the father to the mother.
Rohner and Veneziano - Argued that father love is important for social competence and academic achievement. They say this has been lost in America’s traditional gender roles.
The importance of the quality of attachment
It is not enough to just have the father around, he needs to do a good job!
Verissimo – found a positive correlation between the quality of the father relationship and the number of friends at pre school.
The link to social skills
Gottman and Katz found that involved fathers had children who were more popular, less aggressive and had high quality friendships.
Differences to the mother attachment
Geiger argued that mother and father attachments serve different purposes (father = play, mother = nurturing).
Absent Fathers
Gottman found no difference in the social adjustment of children brought up by heterosexual and lesbian parents.
Golombok et al found that the quality of the relationship between parent and child was the best predictor of the child’s social adjustment (it didn’t matter if the parents were single, heterosexual and together, or homosexual and living together).