For a long time, it was thought that only the mother was essential for the proper development of the child. We now know that the role of the father is far from secondary… beyond the traditional authority figure, he exerts a positive influence on the child’s entire personality, and this from a very young age.
The father: an authority figure
Twentieth-century psychology has agreed to attribute essentially to the father the function of representative of the Law: it is he who, by the fact of his existence, symbolically prevents the fusional mother-infant relationship from continuing any longer than necessary. This thus allows the child to open up to the world of others.
The father embodies and transmits to the child the rules that will allow him to acquire strength of character, power of control, moral sense, and desire for positive self-affirmation. The traditional figure of the father is therefore on the side of authority and he plays a role in socialization.
The father: a model of identification
It is also established that the father plays an important role in the construction of the child’s sexual identity.
- For the boy, he is a role model: the one he will try to resemble.
- For the girl, he is a kind of ideal model of the opposite sex: the one she will seek to find again after puberty.
In this classical perspective, it is up to the mother to provide the infant with affection and active presence; the father has no role to play before the end of the “tender years”. The function attributed to him is symbolic and his actual presence is not considered indispensable to the very young child. What matters is that the father exists in the mother’s thoughts and words, thus indicating to the child that he is not the sole object of her desire.
While this pattern remains valid for most psychologists, it does not explain the possible influence of the father as an affective and effective presence.
But, times have changed…
The traditional role given to the father is linked to a schematic and outdated conception of the couple: to the man, the outside world, and the economic function; to the woman, the home, and the emotional function. It is also linked to a model of family structure built to last .
But the couple has evolved. Women have entered the world of work and fathers are more involved with young children, in games, in daily life, meals, baths, etc. The family structure has broken up to make way for a mosaic of different structures ( single-parent, blended families, etc.).
Finally, the vision of relationships within the family has changed! Women no longer accept being reduced to motherhood. Men are increasingly at odds with the principle of paternal power. They are ready to acknowledge that they are sensitive and affectionate towards their children, without this undermining their masculine identity. A new model of father …
What do “new fathers” bring to their children?
Several recent studies have been conducted on the influence of the physical and active presence of fathers with toddlers . They have shown that this presence prepares them more effectively and more quickly than the mother would venture into the thutside world. They would be more quickly able to fend for themselves, to be recognized and accepted in a group of children and to integrate, the rules of collective life. By his teasing, his attempts at deand stabilization, the father encourages the child to adapt to novelty . By his tendency to encourage exploration, he prepares him to face the unknown. By his inclination for physical games (tickling, simulated wrestling, etc.), he helps to make him aware of respect for the rules and the adversary .
“New fathers” therefore have a dynamic effect from the first years of the child’s life, helping him to build the bridge between self-affirmation in the family and self-affirmation outside.
An emotional role as strong as that of the mother?
One area of father-child relationships that studies have not yet explored is the form that their emotional attachment can take, an area traditionally reserved for the mother. However, it has been proven that children under 1 year old are likely to become attached to several people, including their father. However, if the child is in distress, the mother remains the most able to comfort them.
Today, there is little tangible data to inform us about the mode of emotional attachment that a child can form with his father. But few still doubt the benefits of paternity fully assured at the mother’s side and from the beginning …