Emerging Topics on Father Attachment: Considerations in Theory, Context and Development

This book is the first of its kind to focus specifically on children’s attachment to fathers, and explores the connections among fathering, family dynamics, and attachment relationships. It includes theoretical, methodological and research reports written by an interdisciplinary group of researchers from around the globe. The purpose of this book is to familiarize the reader with the conceptualization, measurement and provisions of the attachment bond between children and their fathers, from infancy through young adulthood and across diverse individual, family, community, and cultural systems. Recent empirical findings suggest that new methods of measuring child-father attachment are warranted, and that attachment to fathers may be unique from, but complementary to attachment to mothers. These findings also suggest that attachment to fathers uniquely predicts children’s healthy developmental outcomes, and these findings are robust across various contexts, but these predictive relationships are best understood within context.

This book provides a summary of current scholarly knowledge of fathering and attachment, and describes future directions to be explored by professionals, policy makers and practitioners within family services, education, and social work settings. It is also of interest to the general public.

This book was published as a special issue of Early Child Development and Care.

Lisa A. Newland is a professor of educational psychology in the Division of Counseling and Psychology in Education at the University of South Dakota. She teaches courses in child development, statistics, research methods, and child assessment. Her research interests include parent-child relationships and developmental outcomes from infancy to adolescence, fathering and co-parenting, and interactions between home and school settings.

Harry S. Freeman is a professor of educational psychology in the Division of Counseling and Psychology in Education at the University of South Dakota. He teaches courses in child and adolescent development, interdisciplinary education, and research methods. His research interests include attachment in parent-child and romantic relationships, and links between these adolescent social worlds.

Diana D. Coyl is an associate professor of child development in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at California State University at Chico. She teaches courses in school-age and adolescent development, family relations, research methods and statistics. Her research interests include attachment relationships across the lifespan, adolescent identity development, couple relations and parent-child relationships.