Recent findings indicate the need to notify traditional views that the infant's attachment is usually exclusively and primarily with the Mother and that the father does not become an important figure for the child until after infancy. Research discussed in this book clearly indicates that individual differences in paternal behavior can greatly influence the strength of the infant's attachment to the father. A meaningful attachment to the father can facilitate the infant's social and cognitive development.
             A warm relation ship with a father who is himself secure in his masculinity is a crucial factor in the boy's masculine development. Boys who have punitive, rejecting fathers or passive, ineffectual fathers generally have less adequate sex role functioning than do boys who have interested, nurturing fathers who play a salient and decisive role in family interactions. Having a father does not guarantee that the boy's sex role development will go smoothly. To put it another way, all father-present boys do not become masculine.
             Comparisons of father-absent and father-present boys suggest that availability of the father is an important factor in the masculine development of young boys. There is evidence that the young father absent boy is more dependent, less aggressive and less competent in peer relationships than his father-present counterpart. He is likely to have an unmasculine self-concept. However, analysis of previous investigations revealed methodological difficulties and indicated that a number of factors must be taken to account if the impact of father's absence on masculine behavior is to be fully understood.
             The first few years of life appear to be particularly important in masculine development, and fanther absence during this period seems to have an especially retarding effect. If the boy becomes father absent after the age of five, his sex development seems
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