Father Love and Child Development: History and Current EvidenceAuthor(s): Ronald P. RohnerSource: Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 7, No. 5 (Oct., 1998), pp. 157-161Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Association for Psychological ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182529Accessed: 09/12/2010 16:18

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CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 157

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Father Love and Child Development: History and Current Evidence Ronald P. Rohner1

Center for the Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection, School of Family Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

Abstract

Six types of studies show that father love sometimes explains as much or

more of the variation in specific child and adult outcomes as does mother

love. Sometimes, however, only father love is statistically associated with

specific aspects of offsprings' development and adjustment, after control

ling for the influence of mother love. Recognition of these facts was

clouded historically by the cultural construction of fatherhood and father

ing in America.

Keywords father love; paternal acceptance; parental acceptance-rejection theory

Research in every major ethnic

group of America (Rohner, 1998b), in dozens of nations internation

ally, and with several hundred so

cieties in two major cross-cultural

surveys (Rohner 1975, 1986, 1998c; Rohner & Chaki-Sircar, 1988) sug

gests that children and adults ev

erywhere?regardless of differ ences in race, ethnicity, gender, or

culture?tend to respond in essen

tially the same way when they ex

perience themselves to be loved or

unloved by their parents. The over

whelming bulk of research dealing with parental acceptance and rejec tion concentrates on mothers' be

havior, however. Until recently, the

possible influence of father love

has been largely ignored. Here, I

Copyright ? 1998 American Psychological Society

158 VOLUME 7, NUMBER 5, OCTOBER 1998

concentrate on evidence showing the influence of fathers' love

related behaviors?or simply, fa ther love?in relation to the social,

emotional, and cognitive develop ment and functioning of children,

adolescents, and adult offspring. Moreover, I focus primarily, but not exclusively, on families for

which information is available

about both fathers and mothers? or about youths' perceptions of

both their fathers' and mothers'

parenting. My principal objective is

to identify evidence about the rela

tive contribution to offspring de

velopment of father love vis-?-vis mother love.

I define father love in terms of

paternal acceptance and rejection as construed in parental accep

tance-rejection theory (Rohner, 1986, in press). Paternal acceptance includes such feelings and behav iors (or children's perceptions of

such feelings and behaviors) as pa ternal nurturance, warmth, affec

tion, support, comfort, and con cern. Paternal rejection, on the other hand, is defined as the real or

perceived absence or withdrawal

of these feelings and behaviors. Re

jection includes such feelings as

coldness, indifference, and hostility toward the child. Paternal rejection

may be expressed behaviorally as a

lack of affection toward the child, as physical or verbal aggression, or as neglect. Paternal rejection may also be experienced in the form of

undifferentiated rejection; that is, there may be situations in which

individuals feel that their fathers

(or significant male caregivers) do not really care about, want, or love

them, even though there may not

be observable behavioral indicators

showing that the fathers are ne

glecting, unaffectionate, or aggres sive toward them. Mother love

(maternal acceptance-rejection) is

defined in the same way.

FATHERHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD ARE

CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS

The widely held cultural con

struction of fatherhood in

America?especially prior to the 1970s?has two strands. Histori

cally, the first strand asserted that

fathers are ineffective, often incom

petent, and maybe even biologi

cally unsuited to the job of child

rearing. (The maternal counterpoint to this is that women are geneti

cally endowed for child care.) The second strand asserted that fathers'

influence on child development is

unimportant, or at the very most

peripheral or indirect. (The mater

nal counterpoint here is that

mother love and competent mater nal care provide everything that children need for normal, healthy development.) Because researchers internalized these cultural beliefs as their own personal beliefs, fa thers were essentially ignored by

mainstream behavioral science un

til late in the 20th century. The 1970s through the 1990s, however,

have seen a revolution in recogniz

ing fathers and the influence of their love on child development.

Three interrelated lines of influ ence I have discussed elsewhere

(Rohner, 1998a) seem to account for this revolution. The net effect of these influences has been to draw attention to the fact that father love sometimes explains a unique, inde

pendent portion of the variation in

specific child outcomes, over and above the portion explained by

mother love. In fact, a few recent studies suggest that father love is the sole significant predictor of

specific outcomes, after removing the influence of mother love.

STUDIES SHOWING THE INFLUENCE OF FATHER

LOVE

Six types of studies (discussed at

greater length in Rohner, 1998a) demonstrate a strong association between father love and aspects of

offspring development.

Studies Looking Exclusively at

Variations in the Influence of

Father Love

Many of the studies looking ex

clusively at the influence of varia tions in father love deal with one of two topics: gender role develop

ment, especially of sons, and father

involvement. Studies of gender role development emerged promi

nently in the 1940s and continued

through the 1970s. Commonly, re

searchers assessed the masculinity

of fathers and of sons, and then correlated the two sets of scores.

Many psychologists were sur

prised at first to discover that no

consistent results emerged from this research. But when they exam

ined the quality of the father-son

relationship, they found that if the

relationship between masculine fa

thers and their sons was warm and

loving, the boys were indeed more

masculine. Later, however, re

searchers found that the masculin

ity of fathers per se did not seem to

make much difference because

"boys seemed to conform to the sex-role standards of their culture

when their relationships with their fathers were warm, regardless of

Recommended Reading

Biller, H.B. (1993). Fathers and families: Paternal factors in child development.

Westport, CT: Auburn House. Booth, A., & Crouter, A.C. (Eds.).

(1998). Men in families: When do they get involved? What difference does it make? Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lamb, M.E. (Ed.). (1997). The role of the father in child development. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Rohner, R.P. (1986). (See References)

Published by Cambridge University Press

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 159

how 'masculine' the fathers were"

(Lamb, 1997, p. 9). Paternal involvement is the sec

ond domain in which there has

been a substantial amount of re

search on the influence of varia

tions in father love. Many studies

have concluded that children with

highly involved fathers, in relation

to children with less involved fa

thers, tend to be more cognitively and socially competent, less in

clined toward gender stereotyping, more empathie, psychologically better adjusted, and the like. But

"caring for" children is not neces

sarily the same thing as "caring about" them. And a closer exami

nation of these studies suggests that it was not the simple fact of

paternal engagement (i.e., direct in

teraction with the child), availabil

ity, or responsibility for child care

that was associated with these

positive outcomes. Rather, it ap

pears that the quality of the father

child relationship?especially of fa

ther love?makes the greatest difference (Lamb, 1997; Veneziano

& Rohner, 1998).

Father Love Is as Important as

Mother Love

The great majority of studies in

this category deal with one or a

combination of the following four

issues among children, adoles

cents, and young adults: (a) per

sonality and psychological adjust ment problems, including issues of

self-concept and self-esteem, emo

tional stability, and aggression; (b) conduct problems, especially in

school; (c) cognitive and academic

performance issues; and (d) psy

chopathology. Recent studies em

ploying multivariate analyses have

allowed researchers to conclude

that fathers' and mothers' behav

iors are sometimes each associated

significantly and uniquely with

these outcomes. The work of

Young, Miller, Norton, and Hill

(1995) is one of these studies. These I

authors employed a national

sample of 640 12- to 16-year-olds

living in two-parent families. They found that perceived paternal love

and caring was as predictive of

sons' and daughters' life satisfac

tion?including their sense of well

being?as was maternal love and

caring.

Father Love Predicts Specific Outcomes Better Than

Mother Love

As complex statistical proce dures have become more common

place in the 1980s and 1990s, it has

also become more common to dis

cover that the influence of father

love explains a unique, indepen dent portion of the variation in spe cific child and adult outcomes, over and above the portion of

variation explained by mother

love. Studies drawing this conclu

sion tend to deal with one or more

of the following four issues among children, adolescents, and young adults: (a) personality and psycho

logical adjustment problems, (b) conduct problems, (c) delinquency, and (d) psychopathology. For ex

ample, evidence is mounting that

fathers may be especially salient in

the development of such forms of

psychopathology as substance

abuse (drug and alcohol use and

abuse), depression and depressed emotion, and behavior problems,

including conduct disorder and ex

ternalizing behaviors (including

aggression toward people and ani

mals, property destruction, deceit

fulness, and theft) (Rohner, 1998c). Fathers are also being increasingly

implicated in the etiology of bor

derline personality disorder (a per vasive pattern of emotional and be

havioral instability, especially in

interpersonal relationships and in

self-image) and borderline person

ality organization (a less severe

I form of borderline personality dis- I

order) (Fowler, 1990; Rohner &

Brothers, in press). Father love appears to be

uniquely associated not just with

behavioral and psychological prob lems, however, but also with health

and well-being. Amato (1994), for

example, found in a national

sample that perceived closeness to

fathers made a significant contribu

tion?over and above the contribu

tion made by perceived closeness

to mothers?to adult sons' and

daughters' happiness, life satisfac

tion, and low psychological dis

tress (i.e., to overall psychological

well-being).

Father Love Is the Sole

Significant Predictor of

Specific Outcomes

In the 1990s, a handful of studies

using a variety of multivariate sta

tistics have concluded that father

love is the sole significant predictor of specific child outcomes, after re

moving the influences of mother

love. Most of these studies have

dealt with psychological and be

havioral problems of adolescents.

For example, Cole and McPherson

(1993) concluded that father-child

conflict but not mother-child con

flict (in each case, after the influ

ence of the other was statistically controlled) was positively associ

ated with depressive symptoms in

adolescents. Moreover, father

adolescent cohesion was positively associated with the absence of de

pressive symptoms in adolescents.

These results are consistent with

Barrera and Garrison-Jones's (1992) conclusion that adolescents' satis

faction with fathers' support was

related to a lowered incidence of

depressive symptoms, whereas sat

isfaction with mothers' support was not. Barnett, Marshall, and

Pleck (1992), too, found that when

measures of the quality of both

mother-son and father-son relation

ships were entered simultaneously

Copyright ? 1998 American Psychological Society

160 VOLUME 7, NUMBER 5, OCTOBER 1998

into a regression equation, only the I

father-son relationship was related

significantly to adult sons' psycho

logical distress (a summed measure

of anxiety and depression).

Father Love Moderates the

Influence of Mother Love

A small but growing number of

studies have concluded that fa

thers' behavior moderates and is

moderated by (i.e., interacts with) other influences within the family.

Apparently, however, only one

study so far has addressed the is

sue of whether mother love has dif

ferent effects on specific child out

comes depending on the level of

father love. This study, by Fore

hand and Nousiainen (1993), found

that when mothers were low in ac

ceptance, fathers' acceptance scores

had no significant impact on

youths' cognitive competence. But

when mothers were high in accep tance, fathers' acceptance scores

made a dramatic difference: Fa

thers with low acceptance scores

tended to have children with poorer

cognitive competence, whereas

highly accepting fathers tended to

have children with substantially bet

ter cognitive competence.

Paternal Versus Maternal

Parenting Is Sometimes

Associated With Different Outcomes for Sons, Daughters, or Both

Many of the studies in this cat

egory were published in the 1950s

and 1960s, and even earlier. Many of them may be criticized on meth

odological and conceptual

grounds. Nonetheless, evidence

suggests that serious research

questions should be raised in the

future about the possibility that as

sociations between love-related

parenting and child outcomes may

depend on the gender of the parent and of the child. Three different

kinds of studies tend to be found in

this category. First, some research shows that

one pattern of paternal love-related

behavior and a different pattern of

maternal love-related behavior

may be associated with a single outcome in sons, daughters, or

both. For example, Barber and

Thomas (1986) found that daugh ters' self-esteem was best predicted

by their mothers' general support

(e.g., praise and approval) but by their fathers' physical affection.

Sons' self-esteem, however, was

best predicted by their mothers'

companionship (e.g., shared activi

ties) and by their fathers' sustained

contact (e.g., picking up the boys for safety or for fun).

Second, other research in this

category shows that a single pat tern of paternal love-related behav

ior may be associated with one out

come for sons and a different

outcome for daughters. For ex

ample, Jordan, Radin, and Epstein (1975) found that paternal nur

turance was positively associated

with boys' but not girls' perfor mance on an IQ test. Finally, the

third type of research in this cat

egory shows that the influence of a

single pattern of paternal love

related behaviors may be more

strongly associated with a given outcome for one gender of off

spring than for the other. For ex

ample, Eisman (1981) reported that

fathers' love and acceptance corre

lated more highly with daughters' than with sons' self-concept.

DISCUSSION

The data reported here are but a

minuscule part of a larger body of

work showing that father love is

heavily implicated not only in chil

dren's and adults' psychological

well-being and health, but also in

an array of psychological and be

havioral problems. This evidence

punctuates the need to include fa

thers (and other significant males, when appropriate) as well as moth

ers in future research, and then to

analyze separately the data for pos sible father and mother effects. It is

only by separating data in this way that behavioral scientists can dis

cern when and under what condi

tions paternal and maternal factors

have similar or different effects on

specific outcomes for children. This

recommendation explicitly contra

dicts a call sometimes seen in pub lished research to merge data

about fathers' and mothers' parent

ing behaviors.

Finally, it is important to note

several problems and limitations in

the existing research on father love.

For example, even though it seems

unmistakably clear that father love

makes an important contribution

to offsprings' development and

psychological functioning, it is not

at all clear what generative mecha

nisms produce these contributions.

In particular, it is unclear why fa

ther love is sometimes more

strongly associated with specific

offspring outcomes than is mother

love. And it is unclear why pat terns of paternal versus maternal

parenting may be associated with

different outcomes for sons,

daughters, or children of both gen ders. It remains for future research

to inquire directly about these is

sues. Until then, we can know only that father love is often as influen

tial as mother love?and some

times more so.

Note

1. Address correspondence to

Ronald P. Rohner, Center for the Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection, School of Family Studies, University of

Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2058; e mail: rohner@uconnvm.uconn.edu or

http://vm.uconn.edu/~rohner.

References

Amato, P.R. (1994). Father-child relations, mother child relations and offspring psychological

well-being in adulthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56, 1031-1042.

Published by Cambridge University Press

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 161

Barber, B., & Thomas, D. (1986). Dimensions of fathers' and mothers' supportive behavior: A case for physical affection. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 48, 783-794.

Barnett, R.C., Marshall, N.L., & Pleck, J.H. (1992). Adult son-parent relationships and the asso ciations with sons' psychological distress. Jour nal of Family Issues, 13, 505-525.

Barrera, M., Jr., & Garrison-Jones, C. (1992). Fam

ily and peer social support as specific corre

lates of adolescent depressive symptoms. Jour nal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 20, 1-16.

Cole, D., & McPherson, A.E. (1993). Relation of

family subsystems to adolescent depression: Implementing a new family assessment strat

egy. Journal of Family Psychology, 7, 119-133.

Eisman, E.M. (1981). Sex-role characteristics of the

parent, parental acceptance of the child and child self-concept. (Doctoral dissertation, Cali fornia School of Professional Psychology at Los Angeles, 1981). Dissertation Abstracts Inter

national, 24, 2062.

Forehand, R., & Nousiainen, S. (1993). Maternal and paternal parenting: Critical dimensions in adolescent functioning. Journal of Family Psy chology, 7, 213-221.

Fowler, S.D. (1990). Paternal effects on severity of borderline psychopathology. Unpublished doc toral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.

Jordan, B., Radin, N., & Epstein, A. (1975). Paternal behavior and intellectual functioning in pre school boys and girls. Developmental Psychol ogy, 11, 407-408.

Lamb, M.E. (1997). Fathers and child develop ment: An introductory overview and guide. In M.E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child

development (pp. 1-18). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Rohner, R.P. (1975). They love me, they love me not: A worldwide study of the effects of parental accep tance and rejection. New Haven, CT: HRAF

Press.

Rohner, R.P. (1986). The warmth dimension: Founda tions of parental acceptance-rejection theory. New

bury Park, CA: SAGE.

Rohner, R.P. (1998a). The importance of father love:

History and contemporary evidence. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Rohner, R.P. (1998b). Parental acceptance-rejection bibliography [On-line]. Available: http://vm. uconn.edu / -rohner

Rohner, R.P. (1998c). Worldwide mental health corre

lates of parental acceptance-rejection: Review of cross-cultural and intracultural evidence. Manu

script submitted for publication.

Rohner, R.P. (in press). Acceptance and rejection. In D. Levinson, J. Ponzetti, & P. Jorgensen (Eds.), Encyclopedia of human emotions. New

York: MacMillan.

Rohner, R.P., & Brothers, S.A. (in press). Perceived

parental rejection, psychological maladjust ment, and borderline personality disorder.

Journal of Emotional Abuse.

Rohner, R.P., & Chaki-Sircar, M. (1988). Women and children in a Bengali village. Hanover, NH:

University Press of New England.

Veneziano, R.A., & Rohner, R.P. (1998). Perceived

paternal warmth, paternal involvement, and

youths' psychological adjustment in a rural, biracial southern community. Journal of Mar

riage and the Family, 60, 335-343.

Young, M.H., Miller, B.E., Norton, M.C., & Hill, J.E. (1995). The effect of parental supportive behaviors on life satisfaction of adolescent off

spring. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 813-822.

Learning and Representing Verbal

Meaning: The Latent Semantic

Analysis Theory Thomas K. Landauer1

Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado

Abstract

Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a theory of how word meaning?and

possibly other knowledge?is derived from statistics of experience, and of

how passage meaning is represented by combinations of words. Given a

large and representative sample of text, LSA combines the way thousands

of words are used in thousands of contexts to map a point for each into a

common semantic space. LSA goes beyond pair-wise co-occurrence or cor

relation to find latent dimensions of meaning that best relate every word

and passage to every other. After learning from comparable bodies of text, LSA has scored almost as well as humans on vocabulary and subject

matter tests, accurately simulated many aspects of human judgment and

behavior based on verbal meaning, and been successfully applied to mea

sure the coherence and conceptual content of text. The surprising success

of LSA has implications for the nature of generalization and language.

Keywords latent semantic analysis; latent semantic indexing; LSA; learning; meaning; lexicon; knowledge; machine learning; simulation

By age 18, you knew the mean

ing of more than 50,000 words that

you had met only in print. How

did you do that? My colleagues and I think that we may have

cracked this and some other persis

tent mysteries of verbal meaning. We have been exploring a math

ematical computer model and cor

responding psychological learning

theory called Latent Semantic Analy sis (LSA). Although far from per fect or complete as a theory of

meaning and language, LSA accu

rately simulates many aspects of

human understanding of word and

passage meaning and can effec

tively replace human text compre hension in several educational ap

plications. Among other things, it

mimics the rate at which school

children learn recognition vocabu

lary from text, makes humanlike

assessments of semantic relation

ships between words, passes col

lege multiple-choice exams after

"reading" a textbook, and makes it

possible to automatically assess the

content of factual essays as reliably as

expert humans.

THE LATENT SEMANTIC ANALYSIS THEORY

The formal LSA model relies on

sophisticated mathematical and

Copyright ? 1998 American Psychological Society