Updating paternal images in father‐adult son relationships

This paper uses sociological perspectives to review issues in parent‐adult child relationships, focusing on the parent‐adult son relationship. Based on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988), it was expected that men's images of their fathers and their perceptions of their relationship with father would be updated, revised, or relatively unmodified since childhood. Men's reworking father images were traced and mediators or catalysts which seemed to precipitate or promote change in the men's views of their father identified. Examples of these mediators are presented along with vignettes from various father‐adult son relationships where paternal images have changed. The study suggests that a revised internal image of father is important for modifying generational relationships. As a securely attached child grows older and his parents treat him differently, a gradual up‐dating of models [parental images] occurs. In the case of the anxiously attached child, by contrast, this gradual updating of models is in some degree obstructed through defensive exclusion of discrepant experience and information.