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A parent's gender is far less important in affecting child development than broader qualities such as warmth and kindness
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Fathers who have participated in baby-care courses take on more care of their babies than fathers who have not.
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Such fathers keep closer to their babies, engage in more face to face interaction with them, smile at, look at, and talk to them more.
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There is no difference between men's and women's patterns of arousal in response to their newborn babies. Researchers have compared such things as increase of heart rate, blood pressure and skin conductance when men and women are confronted with a crying or smiling baby.
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Fathers are as sensitive and responsive to their young children as mothers are. For example when fathers feed their young babies they respond appropriately when the baby wants to pause or needs to splutter after taking too much milk. They also manage to get as much milk into the baby as mothers do.
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How fathers spend time with their young children is more important to the father-child relationship than how often they are with them. The amount of time that fathers are available to their children has not changed very much during the previous four decades but what has changed is men's use of such time to get actively involved in such things as playing with their young children, bathing, changing nappies and putting them to bed.
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Fathers and mothers give their babies the same amount of affection. Studies have also found that there is very little difference between mothers and fathers with respect to the amount of affection and responsiveness they show to their young children.
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Babies usually "bond" as easily with their fathers as with their mothers. Many studies have compared the ways in which 1-2 year olds relate to their "attachment" figures and have found that the closeness of father and baby is almost identical to that of mother and baby. This happens even when fathers have only a little contact with their babies each day due to long working hours.
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Some studies suggest that fathers help particularly in preparing the child for the outside world and developing "social skills". In one major study preschoolers who had spent more time playing with their dads were found to be more sociable when they entered nursery school.
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Studies of fathers' speech with their children have found that fathers use language that is as sensitive to their children's level of understanding as mothers' language. However dads are also likely to use terms that are inappropriate to the child's understanding (such as "aggravating" and "brontosaurus"). Such complex language is thought to stretch children's language development, making the father act as a "bridge" to the outside world.
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Direct, NFPI, Working With Men and Newpin Fathers Support centre in 2001. The Fathers Direct website summarised the main points with many of them highlighting the importance of communicating and talking with babies and the influence that dads can have.
