Week Four Post One

While reading this chapter I found the section on comparing mothers and fathers to be most interesting. The book explains how mothers are the typical care giver and fathers are the typical playmate. As a child growing up my mother was always the one making sure I wasn’t feeling under the weather and when I was would nurse me back to health. She did my laundry, packed my lunch and put the Band-Aids on my cuts. My father on the other hand would always be the one helping me with homework or playing sports. It is said that fathers are more likely to elicit smiles and laughter from infants than mothers. I found this very interesting because I assumed infants would be more attached to the mother, but fathers actually enhance their children’s social and emotional development in many ways. Close father-infant relationships can teach infants appropriate expressions of emotion, and can also decrease the risk of depression for the fathers.  Fathers are said to provide excitement while mothers caress, read or sing. In my house I was lucky enough to have both my biological parents around to raise me. They say a well functioning family involves both a mother and a father who cooperate and complement each other each giving the infant what the other does not. And the statement is true because anything my mother couldn’t help me with or provide me with my father could and vice versa. I grew up with a closer relationship to my mother, but only because my dad would constantly be working. But after reading this section I wonder what I would be like if I was around my father more than my mother.