Parenting Predictors of Father-Child Attachment Security: Interactive Effects of Father Involvement and Fathering Quality

This study examined the parenting predictors of father-child attachment security in early childhood. Results suggest that multiple dimensions of fathers’ parenting quality moderated the associations between father involvement, in its original content-free sense, and father-child attachment. Specifically, father involvement was generally unrelated to attachment security when fathers engaged in high-quality parenting behavior, but associated with lower levels of attachment security when fathers’ parenting was less adaptive. Findings provide further evidence for the important role of parenting quality in the fatherchild attachment relationship, and suggest that the consequences of involved fathering for father-child attachment security are dependent upon qualitative aspects of fathering behavior.