ABSTRACT
Recent observational studies suggest that the fathers role with young infants is far less biologically constrained than was once thought. Wide variability in the behavior and roles of the two parents challenges, I believe, many of the stereotypes of the father as incompetent or not involved with the infant. Research I have conducted on patterns of father-infant interaction in the infant’s first 6 months of life reveals that fathers can and often do form a significant relationship with their infants, one that is in some respects similar to and in other respects different from the mother-infant relationship. Indeed, the infant’s capacity to elicit and engage in different patterns of interaction with father and mother, as well as with strangers, requires some revision of our previous ideas of the infant as passive, reactive, incapable of delay, and lacking any ego functions.
