It would not be absurd to claim that on a given day it would be more likely to see a mother walking around pushing a stroller than a father, nor to claim that fathers rarely take as long of a leave from work for the first year of their child’s life as mothers do. 

Researchers studying the infant and early development have also often noted that fathers seem to be less involved with babies than mothers and have concluded that fathers are less important because of this (Boyd, Johnson, & Bee, 2017, p. 146). 

Despite these common observations and widely-held beliefs, there are likely many loving and enthusiastic, but discouraged fathers out there as well as frustrated, overworked, burdened mothers who would be interested to know if it is in fact vital for mothers to be the primary caretaker and fathers to play a secondary role in raising children in the early stages of their lives or if this is simply a myth.

Aside from practicalities such as the need for the mother to recover physically from giving birth and the need to breastfeed the child, it isn’t obvious why it seems to be true that mothers need to spend more time at home with their babies after they’re born than fathers do but cultural traditions and the gender role expectations of society is the most likely reason. 

For example, researcher Kyle Pruett (1997) explains that it has become a societal norm to “affirm a close and uninterrupted attachment between baby and mother in the service of early ‘mother-infant bonding” so fathers often feel pressured to “back off from [the] mother and newborn” (Pruett, 1997).

Pruett (1997) also points out that mothers often want to demonstrate to others their skills in caregiving because this is a highly-valued trait of femininity in our society which can cause fathers from being excluded during the early caregiving period (Pruett, 1997).

Just because something is valued by society though doesn’t mean it is right: there is evidence that suggests that fathers need to not only be simply present in their child’s life as a secondary helper when they’re a baby, but just as involved in raising the child as the mother is for the child to develop to its full potential. 

According to Boyd, Johnson, & Bee (2017), there’s no inherent biological differences in males’ attachment behaviour with their children: “in the early weeks of the baby’s life fathers touch, talk to and cuddle their babies in the same ways that mothers do.” (Boyd, Johnson, & Bee, 2017, p. 145). They also claim infants tend to react with different expressions during interactions with the two parents because they recognize the same gender behavioural differences between them as developmental scientists do (Boyd, Johnson, & Bee, 2017, p. 146). 

One could conclude from this that despite equivalency in relationship nurturing abilities, mothers still have the one-up in terms of importance to their babies since they are able to feed them in a naturally physically intimate way. This can be countered though with the point that babies have a need for their father to be around as well so they are able to differentiate themselves from their mother’s self (Pruett, 1997). 

Pruett explains that children who don’t have fathers around or sort of male father figure are more likely to be more dependent and feel insecure when separated from their mother when as they grow up (Pruett, 1997). 

There is also research that suggests that fathers, regardless of where they fall on the gender spectrum, seem to have an intrinsically distinct style of playing with and teaching their young children which creates a relationship between them that is unlike any other (Pruett, 1997). This kind of relationship is not only beneficial for the child in that it provides them with day-to-day and long-term benefits such as “protection, material resources, direct care, and role modelling”, but as well because the father also benefits physically and mentally from the relationship which indirectly benefits the child since the overall well-being of the family is improved (Boyd, Johnson, & Bee, 2017, p. 146). 

Although they weren’t carried out long enough to analyze the effects on the children when they became adults, Pruett (1997) also describes numerous studies that showed the high involvement of fathers in care of infants correlates with high social and physical development scores on scales such as the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Pruett, 1997).

The purpose of this paper is in no way to try to diminish the importance of the mother role in the child rearing process. It is clear though that researchers and society in general haven’t given fathers enough recognition and encouragement in caregiving for their infant children: it is just as vital for fathers to be primary caretakers as it for mothers to be primary caretakers for the healthy development of children.