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Studies have found that the father is a child's preferred attachment figure in approximately 5–20% of cases. [1] [2] [3] Fathers and mothers may react differently to the same behaviour in an infant, and the infant may react to the parents' behaviour differently depending on which parent performs it. [4]
For example, children raised with significant positive father involvement display greater empathy, higher self-esteem, increased curiosity, higher verbal skills, and higher scores of cognitive competence." [6] Increasingly, the responsible fatherhood movement has defined itself by focusing on the development of healthy father-child relationships.
Fathers also have an important bonding role after the child is born. Fathers find many ways to strengthen the father-child bond with their children, such as soothing, consoling, feeding (expressed breast milk, infant formula, or baby food), changing diapers, bathing, dressing, playing, and cuddling. Carrying the infant in a sling or backpack or ...
The International Dictionary of Psychology defines "father figure" as "A man to whom a person looks up and whom he treats like a father." [4] The APA Concise Dictionary of Psychology offers a more extensive definition: "a substitute for a person's biological father, who performs typical paternal functions and serves as an object of identification and attachment.
A second study also found a risk of schizophrenia in both fathers above age 50 and fathers below age 25. The risk in younger fathers was noted to affect only male children. [23] A 2010 study found the relationship between parental age and psychotic disorders to be stronger with maternal age than paternal age. [24]
Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. A biological father is the male genetic contributor to the creation of the infant, through sexual intercourse or sperm donation. A biological father may have ...
The father complex also stood at the conceptual core of Totem and Taboo (1912-3). Even after the break with Jung, when "complex" became a term to be handled with care among Freudians, the father complex remained important in Freud's theorizing in the twenties; [7] —for example, it appeared prominently in The Future of an Illusion (1927). [8]
A study in Ethiopia in 2008 found that despite being poorer overall, widowed and divorced women are on average 2.4 kg heavier than women whose children's fathers are present. [23] Widowed and divorced mothers as well as their daughters are reported to have substantially improved nutritional status which could be explained by them having greater ...