The organization of children's secure base behaviour in two-parent Portuguese families and father's participation in child-related activities

Abstract

The organization of children's secure base behaviour was studied in two-parent Portuguese families, with 44 father–child and mother–child dyads, children's age was on average 31.91 months. An analysis of Attachment Q-sort (AQS; Waters, 1995) data revealed no significant differences in security scores for mothers and fathers. Both parents independently responded to a questionnaire about their participation in child-related activities, relative to their spouse's participation in these activities. A traditional division in the Care/Organization tasks and a shared participation in the Play/Leisure activities emerged. Fathers with higher scores for both types of activities tended to have children with higher security scores. Fathers' participation in Play/Leisure activities was associated with children's AQS scores with their mothers. In this sample father's participation is positively associated with the quality of secure base relationships within the family context.

Keywords:

• Family context
• Fathers' participation
• Secure base relationships
• Type of activities

This work was supported in part by grant s from FCT (PTDC/PSI/66172/2006) and NSF (BCS 0623019).

The authors wish to thank all the mothers, fathers and children who participate in this study. We are also grateful to all the colleagues from Line 1 of UIPCDE – Developmental Psychology for their valuable comments.