Russell - attachment from a father’s perspective

When it comes to designing activities or thinking about how to engage with fathers, I think it’s really important to consider what attachment means from a dad’s perspective.  Because I think traditionally we look at attachment theory through a very maternal lens.  It’s all about closeness and security and it’s about kids learning to trust their moms that way.  So it’s very maternal I think.  But as we’ve been looking over the last few years at how dads interact with kids, what we’re seeing is that men actually engage with their kids through play and through activation and through exploration and problem-solving.  It’s just this really somewhat unpredictable interaction between dads and their kids.   And so the kids are learning to trust their dads through the context of activation and play.  And so what that means for us who work with fathers and families then is that programs for dads I think need to be very activity-focused.  There needs to be something that dads are doing with their hands that they’re thinking about planning stuff and being active.  It’s play that’s really kind of gross motor kind of stuff because that’s really the context that men feel like a father in a lot of ways.