Involved fathers of preschool children as seen by themselves and their wives: Accounts of attachment, socialization, and companionship

Studies of infant-father attachment and other aspects of father-child relationships burgeoned during the 1980s and 90s, in step with new expectations for greater father participation in childrearing, but less is known about how involved fathers experience themselves as attachment figures, socialization agents, and playmates/companions of their young children. In an attempt to investigate these topics from a relationship perspective, we administered the Parent Attachment Interview (PAI) to 49 married fathers from dual career families who, based on current literature, were expected to be active participants in caring for and interacting with their preschool children. The 22 open-ended PAI questions were designed to probe fathers' thoughts and feelings about parent-child attachment, but also elicited extensive descriptions of other aspects of fathering, including socialization and companionship. In addition, fathers reflected on similarities and differences between the father- and mother-child relationships, and these accounts were compared with corresponding discussions by their wives. Among new issues raised by the study were the role of affection in attachment relationships, evidence for the attachment hierarchy construct, issues of parental self-control in relation to discipline, conceptual overlaps between attachment and other aspects of parenting, and the diverse meanings of father-mother differences and disagreements in the three domains of parenting addressed in this study.