Relationship Between Mother and Child: Comparison to Father's Role

Introduction

The attitudes towards family life have drastically changed over time due to economic and social reasons associated with global development. With modernized views, where children are seen as an equal responsibility of both parents, conjugal roles gradually equalized. Consequently, more developed countries such as Sweden have taken some actions towards equalising conjugal roles in postmodern families. According to Michael Wells, ‘The Swedish government provides one of the most comprehensive and egalitarian parental leave policies in the world, permitting parents to take 480 days off of work, receive 80% of their pay for the first 15 months, and divide their leave however they see fit, barring that both parents receive 2 months of parental leave that is exclusive to them.’ Adding to this, the UK has taken action in 2003 to officially introduce the new idea of paternity leave for working fathers with a wish to support mothers and their children after birth or adoption. With such action, there is evidence that the ideas of parenting and the equal responsibility division started to change, impacting the relationship between mother and child.

Involvement of a Mother and Father in Parenting

On the other hand, some countries in Eastern cultures such as Saudi Arabia strongly believe that mothers are more suitable for raising children due to their biological closeness with the child. Fathers are believed to be more suitable for the breadwinning role. This means that cultural factors influence the attitudes towards family life shaping the conjugal roles. Also, the economic differences between countries in terms of GDP strongly influence the attitudes towards the leave with a constant question of ability to afford the involvement of both working parents. Lower economically advantaged families are said to have less assets and flexibility to afford time of work bringing out the question of fairness of introducing paternity leaves in only handful of countries.

Nevertheless, the focus of this essay is to examine whether the father involvement benefits the child equally as it is believed that a mother does. Therefore it is essential to look at both positive and negative effects of the involvement of fathers. With both parents involved the family gets an unique opportunity not to be separated by paid work which is usually the situation on the daily basis. This strengthens the familial connections and relationships within parents and children. Although, biologically, childbirth is associated with mothers having an immediate role in nurturing their newborn by breastfeeding for the early development

For humans, various biological and psychological factors influence their primary relationship and primary roles they assign for themselves once the offspring arrives. A hormone called oxytocin is released into the mother’s bloodstream, immediately after she touches her newborn for the first time helping better familial bonding. However, the levels of oxytocin significantly decrease with the lack of physical contact of a mother with a child. With working mothers and fathers on paternity leave limits the maternal contact with a child. For this reason, there has been an ongoing question: Should mothers remain primary child care givers? Therefore, through this essay, I intend to analyse the contrasting perspectives of effects of a mother compared to a father onto a child’s cognitive, emotional and social development.

Benefits of Father's Involvement 

Nevertheless, I will firstly consider the argument of Anne McMunn from Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College London, Fathers’ Involvement: Correlates and Consequences for child Socioemotional Behaviour’ in the United Kingdom. Her argument is supported by the longitudinal study of 9 573 two (heterosexual) parent families and their children ranging in age from infancy to seven years old.

McMunn focuses on the benefits of father’s involvement into child’s life onto their socioemotional behaviour and cognitive abilities. In this argument she argues that father’s earliest interaction with the child aid the child’s cognitive skills development and introduces advanced expressive and instrumental support that the child gets from the mother firsthand. Expressive emotional support stands for the ability to develop emotionally, often sympathetic behaviour by the presence of parents’ ‘warmth’, while instrumental support aids the development of more physical skills.

It is essential to however consider the high validity and reliability of the argument due to its scientific values. The argument is supported by longitudinal study which promoted validity as the claims made were supported by the study that investigated the same children over a long period of time. Also, the reliability of the argument comes from the authority of the author, originating from University College London, UK. Another reason why this argument is taken into consideration is because it uses range of clear statistical evidence of positive impacts of fathers on children and alongside considers economic and social factors that make it difficult for fathers to spend time with their children. On the other hand McMunn’s argument considers the less effective impacts of fathers as opposed to mothers, providing an argument including both perspectives.

However, McMunn’s argument could be assessed upon its strengths and weaknesses. Among the strengths, is the author’s conscious acknowledgement of both benefits and limitations of father’s involvement in children’s early life. She also considers factors that make the practice of paternity leave difficult. An evidence of this is: ‘Mothers’ reading with children has a greater impact than fathers’ reading on children’s behavior and cognitive abilities after age of 3.’ Also: ‘Fathers working 35 to 40 hours per week were the most likely to engage with their children such as reading to their child frequently, whereas unemployed fathers and those working 60 hours or more per week were the least likely.’ Acknowledging both benefits and limitations of father’s involvement as well as difficulties to achieve involvement create a balanced perspective strengthening the argument and making it more convincing.

Comparison of Relationship Between Mother and Child

Another strength of McMunns argument is her use of pragmatic structuring of an argument with a thesis-antithesis-synthesis form. For example, ‘The greater strength of the relationship between mothers’ reading and child behavior, in comparison with fathers’ reading, may be partly due the beneficial effects of fathers’ reading being drowned out by that of mothers.’ She uses precise figures ‘the likelihood of fathers reading to their children only increased by 35% over several weeks when the mothers are not involved in paid work.’ As the author has two main lines of the argument, one being the benefits of fathers involvement with children and the other one being that the benefits cannot be seen because fathers are not given a chance to involve with children, the use of precise figures provides the sense of confidence making the argument more convincing and persuasive. Also, due to credibility of the author, she has a strong motive for accuracy being from University of London adding stronger validity and reliability. The use of precise figures also highlights the objectivity of the author which leaves the argument value free and bias free and communicating with scientific proof therefore being convincing.

Nevertheless, McMunn’s argument has certain weaknesses that make the argument less convincing. Her argument overall lacks a clear conclusion which would clearly communicate the author’s perspective. The use of clear, direct conclusion would prove persuasive as it would not leave the perspective open to discussion. For example, Mc Munn says: ‘Policies and workplace practices that enable fathers to spend time with their children at very early ages may be important for children’s subsequent development.’ The major weakness of this statement is the author’s choice of language such as ‘may’. Therefore I could observe that there was no signpost to state direction of the argument. Although, being objective and bias free is often regarded as a strength of the argument it could prove as a weakness because it makes the argument rather informative than persuasive. Lacking clear conclusion also threatens the validity of the argument due to it having more than one direction, making the perspective on the father’s involvement unclear and less applicable to the conclusions.

Another weakness lies in the excessive determinism in McMunn’s argument. She repeatedly states how working fathers in middle class families in the UK find it difficult to engage with their children disregarding international differences in income, culture and lifestyle choices. ‘Highly educated fathers in UK that engage in paid work are less involved in everyday activities with their children.’ One must consider that the global average cost of raising children until the age of 17 rose to $233,610 in 2015 indicating some major issues that lower income families originating from both MEDCs and LEDCs face if both parents take a leave within a first year of birth.

Child's Relationship with Mother and Father

Secondly, I will consider the argument by Melanie H. Mallers from California State University, Fullerton on ‘Perceptions of children’s relationships with mother and a father: Daily emotional and stressor experiences in adulthood.’ Given the evidence that the author is a scientist, it is reasonable to consider the reliability of the perspectives and statements given in the argument as well as validity due to author being a developmental psychologist which gives the source a prominent sense of persuasiveness.

Mallers’s main argument focuses on the idea that mothers are still the dominant caregivers to children due to their deeper emotional involvement with children while fathers remain secondary caregivers due to their broader involvement in development of motor skills. As the idea of the New Man rose around 1980s globally and became widely accepted, including ‘the new type of husbands’ which involved more in domestic labour, emotional work and raising children, I thought that this source was an interesting choice as it introduces a contrasting perspective which stays behind the claim that mother-child relationship is the core of child’s happiness and development. On a global level, Arab countries such as United Arab Emirates in majority of families still convey to patriarchal values with a woman mainly focusing on the child care while the man focuses on a more bread-winning role. Although for different reasons, the significance of mother’s care is stressed.

Nevertheless, Maller’s argument could be assessed upon its strengths and weaknesses. She states that ‘Mother-child relationship serves as a salient foundation from which both men and women develop their secure emotional base.’ The strength of this statement lies in the empirical evidence provided for additional support. The author outlines that individuals who had lower daily distress ratings mean of 1.86 had a stronger mother-child relationship ratings of 3.13. The use of precise figures in her empirical evidence significantly increases persuasiveness of the argument because of its objectiveness. Another aspect by which this proves to make the argument more convincing and different from McMunn’s argument is the authors wider range of empirical evidence supporting her key argument. On the contrary, McMunn uses empirical evidence to support two controversial perspectives in her argument.

Mallers also concerns on a more global level in her argument by stating that ‘Parents living in poorer socioeconomic (SES) conditions, for example, tend to be less supportive and nurturing than financially secure parents.’,which proves to increase validity of the argument because it reduces deterministic bias that only focuses on observations from one economic aspect of society. Nonetheless, this statement may appear too vague due to lack of evidence and author’s use on non-assertive words such as ‘tend’ possibly decreasing the validity and competence of the argument.

Also, due to the argument of the study being focused mainly on mother’s and father’s influence on child’s overall development and consequences later in life, the author occasionally introduces unsupported statements such as ‘Only mother-child relationship quality remained a unique predictor of psychological distress.’ although, due to scientific characteristics of the argument supported by primary research, I believe that the argument is well supported overall.

Conclusion

After having evaluated the chosen two arguments, I believe that the argument of Mallers based on study ‘Perceptions of children’s relationships with mother and a father’ is more convincing due to various reasons. One of those being the extensive use of empirical evidence and precise statistics that are closely related to the prevailing argument allowing the argument to be tested on reliability. Another one being the more thorough awareness of the parental influences on children that do not only associate with childhood but adulthood as well. Before having researched these two arguments I stood with a clear idea that fathers should also be primary child care givers, however the more psychological explanations for why mothers should remain in primary role brought by Maller’s argument, succeeded to convince me the opposite. Although, I do not intend to completely disregard the benefits of father involvement, which is why I believe that in the first year of life a mother should remain the primary carers due to biological and emotional predispositions but that fathers should also be given an opportunity to actively involve in child development after the first year of life.           

Works Cited

1. Wells, Michael. 'The Swedish Parental Leave Policy: Promoting Equal Conjugal Roles.' Journal of Family Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2019, pp. 64-80.
2. McMunn, Anne. 'Fathers' Involvement: Correlates and Consequences for Child Socioemotional Behavior.' Child Development, vol. 82, no. 6, 2011, pp. 2009-2027.
3. Mallers, Melanie H. 'Perceptions of Children's Relationships with Mother and a Father: Daily Emotional and Stressor Experiences in Adulthood.' Journal of Family Psychology, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016, pp. 251-260.
4. Identified Academic Type: Argumentative Essay (comparing and contrasting perspectives on the involvement of fathers in child development)