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Nurturing fathers: a qualitative

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a a
Todd L. Goodsell & Jaren T. Meldrum
a
Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah,
USA

Available online: 22 Jan 2010

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 Early Child Development and Care
Vol. 180, Nos. 1&2, January–February 2010, 249–262

Nurturing fathers: a qualitative examination of child–father

attachment
Todd L. Goodsell* and Jaren T. Meldrum

Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

(Received 15 May 2009; final version received 7 July 2009)
Taylor and Francis
GECD_A_441687.sgm

Early
10.1080/03004430903415098
0300-4430
Original
Taylor
102010
180
00000January
Childhood
&Article
Francis
(print)/1476-8275
2010
Development(online)
and Care
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This research investigates the meaning of child–father attachment where the child
feels close to the father but distant from the mother. A categorical-content
narrative analysis was conducted of four transcripts of interviews with women
who were becoming mothers for the first time and who exhibited this pattern. The
analysis suggests the importance of nurturing fathering, and also that these fathers
can differ in their motivations and in the social contexts of their fathering. Self-
assertive fathering and compensatory fathering are concepts suggested to capture
this difference. The link between father involvement and child–father attachment
is explored. Implications for practice and for future research are presented.
Keywords: attachment; fathers; mothers; narrative analysis; qualitative

Early versions of attachment theory placed fathers in an uncertain position within

families. The primary attachment figure was assumed to be the mother, while the
father’s position was considered secondary and culturally variable. Since 1980,
however, there has been a good deal of research developing a more nuanced under-
standing of children’s attachment both to mothers and to fathers. One researcher
concluded that while research has shown “fathers to be competent, if sometimes less
than fully participant, attachment figures, we still have much to learn regarding father
attachment” (Bretherton, 1995, p. 72). This study explores one of the areas in which
there is “much to learn”: cases in which a child feels attached to the father but not
attached to the mother. Also, there is a recognition that scholars need to focus more
on contexts of fathering (Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Marsiglio, Roy, &
Fox, 2005), and better understanding of how context relates to child–father attachment
can create a stronger basis for theories of attachment and of fathering.
There have been suggestions that children attach to mothers and to fathers differ-
ently and that while secure attachment has positive outcomes for a child, there are
different attachment patterns (Bowlby, 1982, pp. 365–366; Diener, Isabella, Behunin,
& Wong, 2007; Pleck, 2007). For children with two coresident parents – a father and
a mother – secure attachment to both parents yields the most positive outcomes. The
second most positive outcomes follow when the child is securely attached to the
mother but not to the father, the third when the child is securely attached to the father
but not to the mother, and the worst developmental outcomes for the child are
predicted when the child is not securely attached to either parent. Of these four

*Corresponding author. Email: goodsell@byu.edu

ISSN 0300-4430 print/ISSN 1476-8275 online

© 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/03004430903415098
http://www.informaworld.com
 250 T.L. Goodsell and J.T. Meldrum

categories, the least is known about cases in which the child is securely attached to the
father and not securely attached to the mother – why does this happen, is there any
diversity within the category, and what is the nature of these family dynamics? Admit-
tedly, there has been little research confirming this ordering of the four categories, but
at the same time the ordering has not been disconfirmed. Instead, researchers have
explored how fathering and mothering each make unique contributions to child
outcomes.
This study addresses two themes through an inductive, qualitative analysis: First,
it develops concepts (self-assertive fathering and compensatory fathering) that
contribute to a better understanding of families where the child feels close to the father
but not to the mother. Second, it addresses how father involvement can be linked to
father attachment. It seems that involvement and attachment are connected in
particular ways for child–father relationships (Grossmann, Grossmann, Kinder, &
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Zimmermann, 2008), and a qualitative approach can help us to understand how this
may work in practice.

Fatherhood and attachment: theory and research

What happens in the family during the first few years of a child’s life affects nearly
every aspect of the child’s life later on (Bowlby, 1973, pp. 208–209; Goldberg, 2000;
Lamb, 1976). As Pleck (2007) explained, secure attachment relationships give a child
a secure base from which to explore the world, and a positive model of self in relation
to others, which then becomes the foundation for relationships with adults and with
peers. Attachment is most likely if there is proximity and lively social interaction
between the child and the attachment figure (Bowlby, 1982, pp. 305–306, 315), but it
does not seem to be necessary that they spend a great deal of time together (Lamb,
1976). There are long-term benefits to secure attachment in childhood (Berlin &
Cassidy, 1999; Bowlby, 2005; Freitag, Belsky, Grossmann, Grossmann, & Scheuerer-
Englisch, 1996). However, Goldberg (2000, p. 170) noted that there is often only a
modest relationship between early attachments and current relationships, and so there
is a need to look at the dynamics of family and other relationships in between early
child experiences and adulthood as possible mediators of early childhood attachment.
Bowlby’s original formulation of attachment theory made the role of the father
ambiguous. On the one hand, Bowlby (1982) suggested that one can think of the basic
unit of human society as mother-and-child, while the role of men is culturally variable
(p. 61), and he emphasised a single attachment figure who was “usually the mother”
(Bowlby, 2005, p. 95). On the other hand, he acknowledged that fathers are important
as attachment figures also (Bowlby, 1982, pp. 202, 307; 2005, p. 92). Many scholars
have questioned the primacy of the mother–child connection (e.g. Kromelow,
Harding, & Touris, 1990; Mackey, 2001; Watkins, 1987; and many of the other
sources referenced in this study), and the importance of fathers in child development
is an idea less in need of defence (Lamb & Tamis-Lemonda, 2004). Since it is fairly
well established that there are many negative consequences for children who lack
paternal care in childhood (see, e.g., Brumbaugh & Fraley, 2006), the emphasis in
fathering research has shifted to the nuances of fathers, fatherhood and father involve-
ment (Lamb & Tamis-Lemonda, 2004).
Fathering is a phenomenon separate from but related to mothering. This is appar-
ent when one considers how social context and time relate to attachment. Context
matters for attachment (Belsky, 1984, 1996), and especially for attachment to fathers.
 Early Child Development and Care 251

Taking marital context as an example, paternal marital satisfaction predicts an infant’s

social referencing to fathers and to mothers, but there is no effect for maternal marital
satisfaction alone (Dickstein & Parke, 1988), and marital conflict results in less attach-
ment to both mother and father whereas positive marital interaction leads to greater
attachment to the father (Frosch, Mangelsdorf, & McHale, 2000). The time horizon is
also important when considering attachment and fathers. Attachment to fathers may
take longer than attachment to mothers (Goldberg, 2000, p. 85), and research that
focuses on just the first two years of life obscures the influence fathers have on
children (Steele, Steele, & Fonagy, 1996).
Early attachment theory placed the greatest emphasis on the child–mother relation-
ship but research has found that attachment to fathers is important also. Fathers and
mothers are not interchangeable. Children attach to fathers differently from and inde-
pendently of mothers, and the consequences of attachment to fathers are different from
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the consequences of attachment to mothers (Bowlby, 1982, p. 315; Cavell, Jones,

Runyan, Constantin-Page, & Velasquez, 1993; Chase-Lansdale & Owen, 1987;
Diener et al., 2007; Ducharme, Doyle, & Markiewicz, 2002; Fonagy et al., 1995;
Grossmann et al., 2008; King, 2006; Kromelow et al., 1990; Owen, Easterbrooks,
Chase-Lansdale, & Goldberg, 1984; Van Wel, 1994).
Given that attachment operates differently with fathers and with mothers, it is
important to consider the dynamics of attachment to mothers and to fathers simulta-
neously. One intriguing case is when the child is securely attached to the father but
not to the mother. Belsky (1996) suggested that the quality of the marriage is only
moderately related to child–father attachment, thereby leaving the possibility of
variation in family dynamics or other contexts to explain this. Others have argued that
“… a secure relationship with the father may actually compensate for an insecure rela-
tionship with the mother” (Kromelow et al., 1990, p. 522; see also Main & Weston,
1981). The possibility of fathers compensating for difficulties in the child–mother
relationship and the role of marital dynamics in father–child attachment deserve
further study.
Scholars have identified several questions that our study helps to address. First,
there are not clear findings about the father–child relationship (Diener et al., 2007;
Freitag et al., 1996; Rosen & Rothbaum, 1993). It is possible that attachment theory
is built around mother–child relationships, without fully understanding how father–
child relationships differ. Second, there is some evidence that attachment classifica-
tions to mother and to father are related (Fox, Kimmerly, & Schafer, 1991; Goldberg,
2000, p. 87; Steele et al., 1996). Research on situations in which attachment to one
parent differs from attachment to the other would be beneficial. Third, scholars need
to consider “positive paternal involvement”, not just time spent with the child or activ-
ities engaged in with the child (Pleck, 2007), and this may help to sort out the moder-
ate, net effects of father involvement. Finally, while scholars have called for research
into how paternal influence works over those longer time horizons (Goldberg, 2000;
Pleck, 2007; Steele et al., 1996, p. 552), work remains to be done in this area. Studying
attachment over a broader time frame requires methodological innovation, however.
Studies of adolescents and attachment have used more flexible or creative research
protocols (e.g. Cavell et al., 1993; Ducharme et al., 2002; King, 2006; Lei & Wu,
2007). There have been several longitudinal studies of attachment and studies of adult
attachment status (see, e.g., Grossmann, Grossmann, & Waters, 2005; Rholes,
Paetzold, & Friedman, 2008; Rholes & Simpson, 2004). This study follows the lead
of Grossmann et al. (2008), including broadening from the term “attachment” to
 252 T.L. Goodsell and J.T. Meldrum

related terms that may better access child–father relationships, such as “sensitivity”,
“involvement” and “interactions” (p. 860).
Grossmann et al. (2008) suggested in their theory of attachment and exploration
why extant concepts are inadequate to capture the unique contribution of fathers to
child development. They suggested that for young people to grow into competent
adults, they must first develop psychological security which includes both secure
attachment and secure exploration, which they defined as: “… confident, attentive,
eager, and resourceful exploration of materials or tasks, especially in the face of disap-
pointment. Secure exploration implies a social orientation, particularly when help is
needed” (Grossmann et al., 2008, p. 873).
This approach expands upon attachment by linking it to involvement. Hence, “play
sensitivity” and “supportive fathering” (Grossmann et al., 2008, p. 874), for instance,
are more relevant indicators of the quality of child–father relationships. Still, we need
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to understand how this works in practice. Such an investigation will help us to under-
stand involvement and attachment, and may also allow us to inductively derive
additional concepts that further clarify child–father attachment.
An interdisciplinary approach to attachment can help scholars to see alternative
frameworks and methodological problems (Magai, 2008, p. 545). Further, while
attachment scholarship has already been using a narrative-based method of studying
attachment designed for adults (Hesse, 1999, 2008), one should not assume that
scholars could not gain from methodological innovation. Scholars in this field
have explored new methods, such as in qualitative and narrative analysis (see, e.g.
Magai, 2008). Hesse’s (2008, pp. 570–573) description of discourse analysis of AAI
(Adult Attachment Interview) transcripts followed an inductive mode of discovery of
speech patterns. Discourse analysis is not the only qualitative or inductive analytic
technique, and AAI transcripts are not the only text-based qualitative data one might
analyse. There is still room to explore other ways in which language (including narra-
tive) can help to understand child–father relationships (see Hesse, 2008, p. 591).

Methods
This study takes an interpretive framework to understand the meaning of child–father
relationships. The purpose of such research is to contribute to the set of concepts and
frameworks with which scholars can understand others – “to aid us in gaining access
to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some extended
sense of the term, converse with them” (Geertz, 1973, p. 24). There is a need for
theorising that introduces new concepts and frameworks for the study of families
(Macdermid, Roy, & Zvonkovic, 2005), and interpretive, inductive research is one
way to accomplish this. While the analysis of qualitative interview texts will not have
some of the elements of certain other types of scientific inquiry, it has its own episte-
mological grounding (Kvale, 1994).
A qualitative study was conducted of transcripts of oral history interviews (Yow,
1994) with women who were becoming mothers for the first time, to determine
concepts and themes to help us to understand closeness to fathers without simulta-
neous closeness to mothers. The interviews were part of a larger, ethnographic inter-
view study of the meaning of parenthood among men and women just becoming
parents for the first time. Data were collected in 2001 and 2002 in a large, Midwestern
city in the USA. The bulk of the project involved 79 oral history interviews with
people becoming parents for the first time (42 fathers-to-be and 37 of their wives or
 Early Child Development and Care 253

partners). Most research participants joined the study through the cooperation of a
major medical centre in the city’s middle-class suburbs; a few joined through the
cooperation of selected minority religious congregations, in order to assure greater
diversity in the sample. Participants ranged from 18 to 36 years in age, and all were
expecting their first child when they agreed to join the study. They reported a range
of working- and middle-class occupations, but many were still young and had not
settled on a career trajectory. A great deal of religious diversity was obtained: 18%
Catholic, 18% Protestant, 18% nondenominational Christian, 6% no religious affilia-
tion, with the rest claiming a variety of religious affiliations: Jewish, Muslim, Latter-
day Saint, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha’i. Eighty-five percent of the research partici-
pants self-identified as White, and some of these were biracial. Nearly all research
participants – being about to become parents themselves – were pleased to talk about
fatherhood, and many expressed approval that the research gave attention to men’s
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experiences and not just to women’s experiences related to parenthood. In the

interviews, research participants were informed that the object of the study was to
understand what it means to be a good father, and they were invited to tell life history
stories to help to answer the question. The research question was evaluative – what
does it mean to be a “good” father – but the interviewer did not make any suggestions
as to what a “good” father was. Research participants were free to draw upon any
experiences, role models and personal influences (fathers or not, men or women),
contexts, feelings or ideas they wished in telling their stories. Interviews were audio-
recorded, transcribed completely and verbatim.
For the present analysis, those life history interview transcripts were selected that
clearly illustrated feelings of closeness to the narrator’s father but distance from the
narrator’s mother. The selection of interview transcripts was conservative; where
there was not enough information to determine whether an interview transcript met all
criteria, the transcript was excluded from the analysis. Four researchers trained in
qualitative analysis independently read and coded all 79 interview transcripts. The
criteria they looked for were the following: The narrator felt close to his/her father but
distant from his/her mother. The mother was alive, so that any relative closeness to the
father was not due to absence of the mother. The mother and father were employed at
least most of the time while the narrator was growing up, neither being a stay-at-home
parent, nor disabled, nor retired, so the narrator had a roughly equal opportunity to
attach to each parent. The mother and the father were coresident, with no narrators
raised by single parents. Finally, the basis for these judgments was based on narratives
involving the first-hand experiences of the narrator and neither on the narrator’s
referring to experiences of other people the narrator knew nor on general statements
about fatherhood. All coders agreed that four oral history interviews met all of these
criteria. It turned out that all of these interviews were with women, so the gender of
the narrator is a constant in this study. All were also White, married, and had at least
some college education.
A categorical-content narrative analysis was conducted of these four interview
transcripts (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998 [especially pp. 112–140]). A
trained student did the initial coding with frequent consultations with the faculty
member who had done the ethnographic observations, narrative interviews and tran-
scriptions. The two developed interpretations of the transcripts together. The protocol
for this type of narrative analysis focuses not on narrative structure but on narrative
content: The researchers determined analytic categories to guide the reading of the
transcripts; their knowledge of attachment theory led them to focus on the qualities of
 254 T.L. Goodsell and J.T. Meldrum

relationships between narrator and father, between narrator and mother, between
father and mother and between narrator and husband/partner. They inductively analy-
sed the narratives about these relationships for the meaning the narratives conveyed,
thus applying an interpretive and descriptive approach to the research.

Findings
Each narrator expressed feeling close to her father and distant from her mother during
childhood. The background of each narrator will be presented, followed by an
exploration of the content of the narratives. Within the data, two distinct fathering
patterns emerged: compensatory fathering and self-assertive fathering.
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Narrators
Lisa was a 22-year-old receptionist with some college education. She was raised in a
Catholic family and lived in the same house all her youth. In her family, Lisa was the
third of four children and had two older brothers and a younger sister. According to
Lisa, times were financially difficult growing up. She remembers when it was not easy
for her parents to make ends meet. Her father was an electrical engineer, but although
he was employed, Lisa remembered being told “that we didn’t have a whole lot of
money to go out and buy stuff”. As such, her father would take odd jobs to “make sure
that there was food on the table”.
Michelle was a 30-year-old application software training manager with a master’s
degree. She had several siblings and described herself and her siblings as “a bunch of
selfish little egocentric kids”. Her father was an only child. She explained that, even
as a child, he was “never defiant”, and “never talked back to his parents”. Michelle
described how her mother grew up in “a completely opposite environment” from her
father. She came from “an alcoholic, abusive family”. Her mother remembered “her
father becoming drunk and mean and violent”, and she did not recall her own mother
ever cooking them dinner. Michelle explained that her mother coped by becoming
“very strong” and “very hard”. She determined to get an education and change her
environment. Michelle had a very comfortable relationship with her father, although,
she said, “I was a very difficult child.”
Tammy, 29-year-old, was the oldest of three siblings. Her sister was two years
younger and her brother was 13 years younger. In describing her childhood and
adolescence, Tammy noted that she was “very involved and very into school”. Her
brother seemed to be largely removed from her childhood recollection due to, she said,
the “wide age difference between myself and my younger brother”. Furthermore,
Tammy mentioned that her sister was more distant from her and their father, likely
because she was much “more quiet”, and “timid”. Tammy’s parents had been married
for more than 30 years and were still together. She thought of her parents as, “not this
lovey couple. They never held hands or did things like that”. Tammy became a school
social worker.
In her family, Angela, 25 years of age, was the oldest of three sisters. Her parents
emphasised how important it was to give their children structure while also being
loving and affectionate. Angela described her father as “not a typical dad”. He strug-
gled with anxiety, shyness, panic attacks and self-esteem issues. However, her mother
maintained a greater emotional distance throughout Angela’s childhood. Their
marriage ended in divorce during Angela’s teenage years. The divorce greatly shifted
 Early Child Development and Care 255

Angela’s family dynamics and was extremely difficult for her parents. At the time of
narration, Angela was working as a substitute schoolteacher.

Fathers as nurturers
The data suggest that fathers can and do exhibit versatility as nurturers, that fathers
may be both a playmate and a nurturing attachment figure, and that fathers may
assume a nurturing role in addition to providing financially for the family. Among the
narratives are examples of versatile fathers who take on a range of emotional and care-
taking roles. There are examples of the father as the primary supporter at cheerleading
meets and community activities; as the source of counsel in dating and courtship; as
the more “caring” and “sympathetic” parent; as the one more prone to give hugs,
verbal affection and encouragement; as the moral and academic teacher; as the
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listener; and even handling such situations as his daughter’s first menstruation. It
seems that a father is able to do his daughter’s hair, listen to her problems and respond
to her in a sensitive, nurturing capacity.
The narrators suggest that it is a false dichotomy to distinguish play from nurtur-
ing. Not only does the same parent do both, but playful interaction and nurturing care
also occur simultaneously and reinforce each other. Angela described her childhood
interaction with her father:

He was very affectionate, very loving. We also did a lot of daddy-daughter date type
things, where one of us would go out with my dad. We would go out for ice cream or we
would go out somewhere just for fun, just the two of us. We did that really, really
frequently …. We were just really chummy when I was little.

These father–daughter outings had a playful orientation, yet also became a way to
communicate emotional affection and establish a relationship of security. Michelle
explained how her father, a meticulous and analytical man with a disposition for fixing
anything, would involve her and her siblings in home repair projects. The children,
excited to participate in their father’s responsibilities, viewed it as play. However, her
father used the time to offer advice, counsel and even instruction. Michelle recalled
him saying during one of these exchanges, “You should be proud of where you live
and who you are and what your family is and be there for them and fix these things
for them.” He used the situation as an educational moment. In this way, Michelle’s
father created quality interactions that fused both fun and trust building. Likewise,
Tammy remembered how her father was “always playing with us [children]”. She
listed different playful situations: he taught her and her sister to ride bicycles and
enrolled them in a community father–daughter programme. They won the homemade
race car derby, an experience Tammy will “never forget”. Tammy recognised these
activities with her father as fun expressions of love and she trusted that her father
would always be present and be involved in a caring capacity, following the pattern
he established. Playful interaction was a way to develop trust and security. It fostered
and contributed to attachment, rather than being isolated from it.
Furthermore, the narrators illustrated how a father’s nurturing was performed in
addition to his responsibilities as the instrumental provider in the home. The father
could be the primary attachment figure even if he was away at work for much of the
day; the child might attach more strongly to him even though the mother was present.
For example, Michelle described how she struggled with her maths schoolwork. Her
 256 T.L. Goodsell and J.T. Meldrum

mother tried to help, but soon became frustrated and impatient. The interactions were
negative. Then, she described her father’s intervention:

We would sit there for hours and hours and hours. And looking back on that, I think
about becoming a parent and the hours that my father spent doing homework after he
worked a full day …. That involvement and that caring, looking back on it made me real-
ize that in my father’s mind, we were more important than television or the outside world
or anything else that was going on.

The actions of Michelle’s father revealed to her his priorities, which in her inter-
pretation became a foundation for a secure attachment. Although he was often away
at work, the example suggests that a parent’s proximity alone to a child does not
directly indicate attachment outcomes. Rather, the number of opportunities for
involvement is of much less importance than the quality of each interaction in forming
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an attachment.

Compensatory fathering
The term “compensatory fathering” describes a kind of fathering that emerges when a
versatile father practises nurturing behaviours that accommodate his partner’s
inability or unwillingness to nurture. In other words, compensatory fathering happens
when a father compensates for a mother who does not nurture. In this situation, the
mother is present but unwilling or unable to assume the role of the primary attachment
figure. She leaves a nurturing void which the father must be adaptable enough to fill,
lest the child be left without an attachment figure.
The narrators suggested that a father’s involvement in childrearing is not second-
ary to motherhood, but is especially important when the mother’s nurturing ability
creates an attachment void. The data suggested that a mother may create such a void
by either making a choice that leads to neglect or lacking the ability to nurture due to
past history or abuse. According to Lisa, her mother, who had both sons and daugh-
ters, would compare the two genders and had a self-decided preference for her sons;
Lisa felt that her mother neglected her. Her mother would tell Lisa, “There’s just
something about boys. There’s a bond that’s different.” As such, her mother assumed
primary attachment for her sons, but generally neglected her daughters. In contrast,
Michelle’s mother lacked attention in her own upbringing and came from “an
alcoholic, abusive family”. Michelle’s mother, though willing to nurture, felt unable.
She struggled with impatience and “emotional dysfunctions”. Michelle’s mother said
that it really wasn’t her calling to be a mother. She described, “I don’t think she had
a role model that taught her.” Though Lisa’s mother was unwilling and Michelle’s
mother was unable, both mothers were perceived by their daughters as not nurturing.
The narratives suggest that fathering that promotes secure child–father attachment
can and does occur even in intensely strained marital relationships. A father’s benefi-
cial adaptive ability contributes to his capacity to engage in positive fathering despite
adverse marital conditions. For Michelle, her mother’s childhood emotional trauma
led to incapacities that strained the relationship between her parents and between her
mother and her daughters. Michelle noted how, in reaction to the stress, her father
would focus on the children whenever he was home. According to Michelle, her father
had the patience that her mother lacked. She could not recall him spending time with
friends or elective relationships outside of the family. Her father’s stability, kindness,
patience and dependability, as well as his focus on his children, enabled him to
 Early Child Development and Care 257

compensate for his spouse’s weaknesses, build attachments with their children, and
provide good fathering regardless of the adverse circumstances. During times of
distress as a teenager, Lisa described, “I would go to my dad and I would tell him that
I was upset and he would notice that I had been crying.” He would offer comfort and
advice. He was also reliable because he was “meticulous” and “predictable”. Through
communication and positive involvement in her life, Lisa’s father developed a pattern
of reliability in which she developed trust.

Self-assertive fathering
Self-assertive fathering describes another pattern evident in the narratives whereby a
child may become close to her father and distant from her mother. The narratives
suggest that, although the mother is present and able to assume the role of the primary
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attachment figure, the father may overshadow her by taking the primary nurturing
responsibilities. Self-assertive fathering describes the fatherly nurturing that takes
place when a father becomes the primary attachment figure by pre-empting the
mother’s involvement, and not through any deficit of the mother. According to
the narrators, this usually means that the mother has limited involvement and that the
father’s characteristics or behaviours render him a primary attachment candidate.
Beyond simply being present, a mother must maintain active involvement and
positive engagement with the child in order to build an attachment. If she is simply
present but uninvolved, she will seem distant to the child. During Tammy’s childhood,
her mother usually implemented structure and was stern. She explained how her
mother would initiate discipline and her father would submissively agree with her.
Tammy stated that, as a teen, she “never abused curfew” and was obedient, but her
mother “seemed to be more strict to me than others”. As such, Tammy interpreted her
mother’s unemotional and disciplined disposition as a source of pressure, not security.
Although her mother was often in proximity to Tammy, Tammy did not forge a
natural attachment to her during childhood. This is similar to Angela, who related how
her mother was always secondary in verbally encouraging them as children. She
described how her mother’s parenting philosophy led her to interact with her husband,
not the children; her mother “always” said, “The best thing you can do for your kids
is to love your husband.” Though her children did not perceive her negatively, her
level of involvement was too minimal to form mother–child attachments.
In the model of self-assertive fathering portrayed by the narrators, an involved and
emotionally sensitive father might assume the primary attachment role when the
mother’s positive involvement is too minimal to be perceived by the child as nurtur-
ing. For example, Angela described how her father was “never condescending”,
verbally encouraging, “caring and very concerned about [his children’s] feelings”,
very “compassionate” and took all her questions seriously. Angela took comfort in
these attributes during times of distress. Similarly, Tammy’s father was “very
involved”. She described, “I was a pom-pom and had competitions and he came to all
of them. When I sang, he came to all of my concerts.” His presence and interest
became a source of security for Tammy. He was especially available when she was
upset, as she described:

When I came home and was crying, I sat on his lap until I was eleven years old. We still
talk about that and joke about that today. A lot of girls and dads wouldn’t bond like that,
or they would go to their moms, I think.
 258 T.L. Goodsell and J.T. Meldrum

From early childhood to young womanhood, Tammy described her father, not her
mother, as her first resort in times of need. These examples suggest that a child may
attach to an involved and positively perceived father over the mother even when the
mother has not abdicated her role as a potential attachment figure.

Attachment: from fathers to husbands

Beyond these systems of unilateral attachment wherein the child attaches to the parent
for security and protection, marriage is the creation and continuance of a system of
bilateral attachment. In this process, two partners, through proximity and social inter-
action, begin a trusting relationship in which they rely on each other for material and
emotional support. Attachment experiences in early life influence the selection of a
spouse and the marriage relationship in young adulthood.
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Each narrator expressed how she married a man very similar to her own father, her
primary attachment figure during childhood. Michelle, after describing how her father
was more nurturing than her mother, explained, “I married someone who is just like
that, too.” She went on to describe several ways in which the temperament of her
husband was similar to that of her father. Lisa, whose sense of comfort in her father
came largely from his predictable and meticulous nature, explained that her husband
is “the exact same way”. She went on to describe a vignette when her husband was
able to give her security in a way parallel to her father during her rearing, and then
commented: “It’s very useful when I’m feeling kind of helpless sometimes just to be
able to rely on my dad, my brother, [my husband].” Angela’s father, at her wedding,
brought her a picture she had drawn as a child. It read, “My dad is my hero and I want
to marry my daddy when I grow up.” This shows how this influence operates as a
young child. Finally, Tammy commented, “I get told all the time I married my father.”
She went on to say, “They’re very much alike,” and listed several attributes they share,
including financial responsibility, recreational pursuits, listening ability and other
personality traits. She next concluded about these two men that, with them, “I feel
safe, I think.” In each case, the narrator sought a companion with several traits in
common with her father to find a similar comfort in adult attachment to what she felt
as a child. In adulthood, it seems a person seeks for a partner who will offer a contin-
uation of the attachments experienced previously in life. Thus, the feelings of security
can continue through the life course.

Discussion
Fathers can compensate for mothers (Kromelow et al., 1990, p. 522), in a sense. They
do provide an alternative attachment figure to the mother. This research cannot
evaluate Main and Weston’s (1981) assertion that attachment to the father but not to
the mother is better than the reverse, but the analysis suggests that this pattern of
family relationships does provide psychological security for the child. This is
particularly important for child development where the mother is unable, for whatever
reason, to be an attachment figure.
Grossmann and colleagues’ (2008) distinction between secure attachment and
secure exploration helps us to see how fathers make a unique contribution to the
raising of children, and they do this by linking father involvement and child–father
attachment. This study supports their concept of “psychological security” (p. 873),
linking security of attachment with security of exploration. When these women talked
 Early Child Development and Care 259

about how much they valued their father’s “involvement” in their lives, they were not
simply talking about how their fathers did things with just them at home. They told
about how their fathers went with them into the larger world, as through father–daugh-
ter community events. They cheered for their daughters when the girls were involved
in sports or other activities. At a minimum, the fathers taught their daughters skills that
the daughters would later use at school, at work or in the community. It is in these
ways that father involvement became connected to father attachment – even if the
women themselves only recognised it in retrospect. The “safety”, which the women
reported feeling first with their fathers, was not a retreat to childlike feelings of
dependence. Their fathers were men they trusted, who prepared them to engage in the
larger social world.
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Conclusions
This research has improved our understanding of attachment in several ways. First, it
suggests family dynamics in situations where a child feels close with her father but not
to her mother. It seems that not all such families are the same; two patterns that appear
in such families are self-assertive fathering and compensatory fathering. This distinc-
tion can become important when clinical interventions are attempted. Second, it is
clear from the data that attachment is relevant throughout the life course: Attachment
can fluctuate over time, attachments established in early childhood can continue, one
can form new attachments in later childhood or in adulthood, and existing attachments
can be reinterpreted with new contexts and circumstances. Third, attachment to a
father is a result of a mutual response of the father and the child, each responding to
their respective contexts. On this matter of context, it seems that a strained marital
relationship does not necessarily mean that there will be problems with child–father
attachment. While the data do not suggest that mothers do not play a role, the child
and the father each express their agency in their developing relationship, aside from
the contribution of the mother.
There are several limitations of this research, which indicate possibilities for future
research. First, this research only considered child–father attachment with narratives
from daughters. Future research should consider this relationship with sons. In a
culture in which gender is so important, sons may experience attachment to father but
not to mother as less problematic or at least less remarkable. It is possible that father-
ing under conditions of son–father attachment but not son–mother attachment may be
not so gendered or may be even more gendered. The father may feel that he must show
more emotions when the mother cannot or will not be close to the son, or he may enter
into a hypermasculine relationship with his son to the exclusion of the mother.
Second, this study considered only narratives and attachment at a certain life course
transition. Future research can consider other meaningful points in adult life, such as
when a person married, when a parent dies and so forth. It is likely that early child-
hood experiences are reinterpreted several times over the course of one’s life, and in
the course of the reinterpretations the father and the mother may each gain or lose
relative prominence in the narratives. In this perspective, childhood memories with
fathers and with mothers are resources from which individuals may draw as they try
to make sense of their shifting life circumstances. Finally, this research only consid-
ered White, middle-class Americans. Each culture or subculture may have its own
patterns of attachment across the life course, and each will need to be assessed on its
own terms with regard to child–father attachment.
 260 T.L. Goodsell and J.T. Meldrum

This research can further be important for practitioners. Fathering can still occur
when the mother cannot or will not connect with the child. Family practitioners should
remember the importance of fathers remaining connected with their children, and
especially when the mother has difficulty doing so. Fathers should understand the
benefits of positive father involvement, but especially under circumstances of a
distant, emotionally unavailable mother, a child needs an alternative primary attach-
ment figure. Further, those who work with troubled families – school employees,
social workers, clinicians, etc. – should not assume that all nurturing fathers are the
same. They may have very different motivations leading to the outcome of higher
paternal investment. Father involvement can be an adaptive response to negative
contexts at home. In the latter case, a nurturing father may need particular support.
Finally, attachment should be thought of as a multigenerational phenomenon. The
effects of early childhood abuse can be felt generations later – as in the case of the
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woman who, having been abused by her father, could not begin to be emotionally
responsive to either her daughter or her grandchild. Family and educational practitio-
ners should be ready to address extended families both as sites of potential problems
for attachment and as resources to facilitate attachment. Further research is also
warranted on this.

Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided by grants from the Center for the Ethnography of
Everyday Life, an Alfred P. Sloan Center for the Study of Working Families; the Rackham
School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan;
and the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University.

Notes on contributors
Todd L. Goodsell is an assistant professor of sociology in the College of Family, Home, and
Social Sciences at Brigham Young University. He teaches courses in social problems, socio-
logical theory, and ethnography. His research interests include cultural conceptions of men’s
roles in families, neighbourhood revitalisation and change, gentrification, and Mormon
villages.

Jaren T. Meldrum is a student in sociology at Brigham Young University. His research interests
include fatherhood, international development, and health care.

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