ABSTRACT
In his review of research on the role of the father, Nash (1965) pointed out that Carmichael’s (1954) comprehensive Manual of Child Psychology failed to list “father” in the index. As recently as 1975, Lamb described fathers as “the forgotten contributors to child development” (p. 245). It has taken several decades of research to establish empirically that men can be competent caretakers of newborns (Lamb, 1975; Parke, 1979; Parke & Sawin, 1975), that at least some are centrally involved in the rearing of their children (Pruett, 1983, 1984; Radin & Russell, 1982), and that fathers have distinct positive effects on their children’s development (Clarke-Stewart, 1977; Lamb, 1981; Yogman, 1982, 1983).
