This book is the first of its kind to focus specifically on children’s attachment to fathers, and explores the connections among fathering, family dynamics, and attachment relationships. It includes theoretical, methodological and research reports written by an interdisciplinary group of researchers from around the globe. The purpose of this book is to familiarize the reader with the conceptualization, measurement and provisions of the attachment bond between children and their fathers, from infancy through young adulthood and across diverse individual, family, community, and cultural systems. Recent empirical findings suggest that new methods of measuring child-father attachment are warranted, and that attachment to fathers may be unique from, but complementary to attachment to mothers. These findings also suggest that attachment to fathers uniquely predicts children’s healthy developmental outcomes, and these findings are robust across various contexts, but these predictive relationships are best understood within context.

This book provides a summary of current scholarly knowledge of fathering and attachment, and describes future directions to be explored by professionals, policy makers and practitioners within family services, education, and social work settings. It is also of interest to the general public.

This book was published as a special issue of Early Child Development and Care.