[updated February 16]. I couldn't hold myself from writing...
Wanted to blog about the article
"You are as good (as mom), dad" (
"Du duger lika bra, pappa" in Swedish), because I thought it was so interesting and/or stirred a lot of thoughts.
Because these early experiences of attachment and bonding are so important for our later life, for growing up to sound, well functioning individuals, independent, self-governed, autonomous and socially functioning in a genuine, real manner. Grounded deeply in the individual.
Here comes a summary of the text:
All over the world it is in first hand the mothers that has taken and still take care of the children. Aren’t men good enough? Oh yes, they are! a Swedish male journalist writes in this article. And he give us the arguments which deprives the absent fathers of their last excuses. (Or don’t they want to have this contact with their kids? Wouldn’t many men want to?? What have they missed earlier and during the whole history maybe?).
During the former decade we have got the idea drummed into us, by one heavy theory after the other, that dads shall protect and provide for wife and kids, but that men/dads aren’t created for near relations with their (or other) children when they are small.
But the last decade there has been a dramatic change in these ideas. A psychological theory which is called the attachment-theory has got its definite breakthrough. And it says that men are as good as women taking care of children. This ought to create a revolution in our way of seeing and viewing the family.
About the anknytningsteorin in Swedish and about the attachment theory in English. Also see a paper on the attachment pattern in three different generations (in Swedish though); dealing with if the foundation for a child’s attachment can be changed later in life, how life occurrences (livshändelser) affect a person’s attachment style, has the sort or type of life occurrences any importance or signification, and can the child’s attachment style be predicted from the parents’?
The theoretical frame of reference which is used in this paper is Erik H. Eriksson’s developmental psychology and John Bowlby’s attachment theory. But I won’t refer more than this to this paper here I think. Both these men got very old!!! Eriksson 92 years and Bowlby 83.
The attachment theory was created by the British psycho analyst and child psychiatrist John Bowlby (1907-1990). After WWII he studied orphans on some of all children’s homes in the war-ravaged Europe. At this time one thought small children didn’t need much more than food and a warm bed to sleep in to feel well and be healthy.
But Bowlby revealed that the feeling of being carried in soft arms was almost as important for a child’s survival as the access (supply?) of food. Children not experiencing bodily contact are at risk of simply dying with no apparent cause, see below about marasmus/inexplicable infant mortality (earlier postings about marasmus and needs) and bonding. Which also was what happened to many children at children’s home before Bowlby made his discovery.
These discoveries were the kick-off for the attachment theory, which Bowlby went on developing till his death 1990.
The research round attachment has shown that both children and parents has an innate need of creating near emotional relations to each others (if it isn’t disturbed or even destroyed early in the later grown ups life). We use these skills during our whole lives, but the process starts already at birth.
At first the child seeks contact with all adults, actively (the grown up though need to be sensitive for these signs, or not insensitive rather I guess? Yes it’s more of a question of that the grown up isn’t insensitive to them!?). But after half a year, or somewhere there, it focuses on a few numbers of persons, concentrating on them. One says that the child attaches to these adults.
As grown ups we have an innate need to attach to small children. That’s why it is almost impossible to not smiling back when a baby smiles at you. Unless the adult hasn’t been injured. In the paper related to above the maternal grandfather was such an injured person (I haven’t read so well so I can say to what degree). But his daughter, the later mother experienced warmth and near relations later in life which made her better prepared for attaching to her child/ren?
And I have read somewhere recently that you CAN rehabilitate what you missed with the small baby at birth, when it comes to attachment and bonding… If this is done the nearest days?? And if you don’t minimize or belittle the importance of bonding and what occurred for the child at birth (A. Miller actually writes about this too in her book “Paths of Life”).
What parents need to do so the child can attach to them in a good way has been studied carefully by the attachment-theoreticians. The grown ups willingness and ability to be sensitive to the child’s needs is entirely decisive.
John Bowlby said the parents should be as a safe foundation/base from which he child can explore the world and as a safe harbor to return to when the child needs protection and nearness. If the parents are successful in this the child gets a safe attachment.
If the parents fail, the attachment gets unsafe; this affects the child’s ability to create relations on its own both with other kids and other adults later in life. Affects it's autonomy!? (my comment).
The professor in psychology Philip Hwang has been a pioneer in this field here in Sweden. Already twenty years ago he tested Swedish children’s attachment-patterns. At that time one thought that children had a unique relation to their mothers. But the results surprised.
-What was exciting was that there is no difference in the attachment-relation to the dad or to the mom,
he says. -There were as many safe attachments to mothers as to fathers.
Hwang found that children could have safe attachments to their fathers independently of how much free from the work the dad had been to be with his kid (see about our Parental Leave/föräldraförsäkring here in Sweden).
-When we made the investigation we had an idea that the fact that one was home a lot with ones kid should influence the attachment-relation. But it wasn’t so. The children could be safe with the dad and unsafe with the mom, no matter if the dad had been free in parental leave a longer or shorter time.
Men have traditionally been seen as incompetent in their capacity of being sensitive for and wanting to meet their children’s emotional needs. But Hwangs investigation showed that dads don’t have problems with this (or don’t have to have problems with this!!??). Which means that dads and moms have an equally good ability to create a safe relation to their kids. This means that dads has been deprived of an important excuse to leave the responsibility for the children to the women.
-Men are no biological monsters!
Hwang says. -His function earlier was to protect the small family-unity, but he had no independent role in relation to the child/ren. Many similar ideas are still remaining. Expressions like 'It feels more natural' and 'Why should the women be ‘equipped’ with breasts if they hadn’t a special role’ (arguments both men and women use!?).
In a new investigation one has found that nurses on child welfare clinics (well baby clinics) not seldom have a traditional view on the mom’s importance for the child despite all good intentions about activating the fathers!!!
It’s clear that parents to be and those who have just become parents are exposed to a cross-fire of ideas which often has no scientific support, but which suits the environments expectations and our own worked-in sex roles.
A man with shared care for his three children (divorced from their mother) said that when he got the children for his week with them he had to make a mental adjustment, from his traditionally ‘manly’ self-centeredness to what he sees as a more ‘female’ sensitivity for the children’s needs. When the children moved back to their mom one week later he had to switch back to his old role to feel well alone.
The author of the article recognizes himself in this, and says that as man he has been trained into the role of putting himself in the first place/room. And that role doesn’t function with his daughter. But his girl-friend (the child’s mom) has been trained into this role since she was a child, being drilled into it, of being sensitive, caring and unselfish, and she has always seen other women taking care of their children, i.e., had role-models.
-As caring man there aren’t many role-models and many would see it as natural if I didn’t fit into this role so well.
he means. He thinks it isn’t strange he feels a certain lack of confidence in this regard, being a care-taker of children, and not least his own children.
The author means that the attachment-theory shows that we, behind the sex-roles, are feeling human beings who manage to make noble achievements in the world and of creating near emotional relations to our children and each others at the same time. We are capable of both/and.
He thinks this view on man is attractive. And thinks that the women’s role of today stands closer to this view on man than men’s role of today. The women have made the journey into the man’s domains more than men have made a corresponding journey into women’s territories. But I would say that too many women have adopted men’s worse sides!!?? Too!?? And abandoned other more 'female' sides, the better ones. To say it kindly??
This equation, of combining all and everything with no real corresponding change in men's roles, has created problems for women. Their workload is enormous today, managing everything.
And we all looses on this!?? How many of us walking around in society, in the world aren't harmed and maimed to different degrees, more or less, with a lot of problems in our lives, our relations??? Problems that wouldn't have been necessary!? And we struggle to handle those...
Yes, I think we can recover, but it is a hard work... And a lot of this work wouldn't have been necessary!? 
Philip Hwang.
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