ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some convincing evidence of the role of fathers in facilitating children’s cognitive and social development. Paternal sensitivity, which broadly refers to warmth and responsiveness, the quality of interactions, and positive regard for the child, appears stable during the early childhood years and is linked to father–child attachment security. The consistent use of different aspects of attributes in the authoritative style of parenting seems to encourage the positive development of social skills across cultural communities. Fathers in the United States who are warm and emotionally responsive had children who were less emotionally reactive and were better at extending social overtures to other children. Maladaptive paternal parenting behaviors, and fathers’ depressive symptoms and interpartner violence, have more severe consequences for childhood functioning. By virtue of their rich properties, father–child activities, such as building things together, playing, shared book reading, and telling stories can stimulate cognitive growth in children and paternal involvement in school-related activities can enrich children’s learning.
