This longitudinal study of 125 families investigated whether negative child outcomes related to fathers' frightening (FR) behaviours with infants would be mitigated if fathers were also sensitive. Results indicated that children whose fathers were frightening and insensitive with them during infancy showed the highest emotional under-regulation at 24 months and highest teacher ratings of attention problems at age 7, whereas those whose fathers were frightening and sensitive did not differ from children whose fathers were sensitive but not frightening. Sensitive caregiving mitigated the negative impact of FR behaviours on child outcomes for fathers, but not mothers. Perhaps fathers who can be sensitive but also engage in stimulating, albeit frightening, interactions with their infants may actually be scaffolding their ability to regulate their affect in intensely emotional situations. FR behaviours by mothers may be more problematic for child outcomes since these behaviours conflict with the primary caregiver's role of providing comfort.Since the early 1970s, research on fathers and their role in children's development has steadily increased. Studies have shown that infants become attached to fathers as well as mothers (Lamb, 1997), and that fathers make important contributions to their children's developmental outcomes (Lamb, 2002). Still, research on father-infant attachment and its relation to paternal caregiving and child outcomes has lagged far behind the research on mother-infant attachment, primarily because attachment theory characterises fathers as secondary attachment figures, and there has been relatively little discussion of what the role of a "secondary" attachment figure is. As the secondary attachment figure, do fathers have the same function as mothers, but to a lesser degree, or do they serve qualitatively different functions?Most of the research on father-infant attachment and caregiving has assumed the latter and thus has focused on replicating findings from the mother-infant attachment literature with fathers, using the same assessments and hypotheses. Specifically, recent research has indicated that both fathers and mothers who have secure-autonomous
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between dyadic and triadic family interactions and their association with the development of children's externalizing behaviors. Data were obtained from a longitudinal study of family interactions (N = 125), followed from before parents had their first child until children were 7 years old. Family interactions (marital, father–child, mother–child, and triadic mother–father–child) were observed in separate interaction tasks when children were 24 months old as predictors of children's externalizing behaviors at age 7 (n = 71 children). Results demonstrated that the triadic measure of competitive coparenting and the dyadic mother–child interaction characterized by negative emotional socialization related to children's later externalizing behavior, even after controlling for covariates and effects of all other family interaction variables. Results emphasize the importance of examining the family holistically and provided new information for designing more effective whole‐family interventions to reduce the development of children's externalizing behaviors.
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