In exploring the function of touch in the field of improving child/infant has been neglected. This is because of the theory developed by John Bowlby, which has gone on to focus on the actual need for an infant to attain a tight and unbreakable attachment to its caregiver. In honesty, this has been an extremely valuable contribution in trying to connect and aiding a child's growth in its infant period and future development. The theory is restricted in its reference of the importance of the sense of touch and its importance in its contribution to the making of the said theory. In addition, it now plays a more critical role in trying to go deeper into the causes that importantly aid the enhancement of attachment, narrowing the human touch concept as more of a sense. This explains the essential function that touch provides in child development.
Duhn In this article seeks to improve on what Bowlby sort out to explore and connect between a child and its caregiver. Touch plays a pivotal role in human beings as it is one of the most important ways of nonverbal communication. It has both phylogenetic and ontogenetic primacy. Phylogenetic primacy is simply the evolutionary history found in the human species while ontogenetic primacy refers to how touch is one of the sensory modality that is the most developed when a child is born. Which is where the article focuses as when a child is born it tends to develop its holding, grasping and also nursing. Also, when there are repeated separations an infant usually develops a sense of time and/or space when the caregiver is away. Thus even before an infant learns how to speak the base for development in a child is mostly laid by the sense of touch as a primary modality of nonverbal communication.
(a) Relates to both quantity and quality of fathering behavior
(b) remained fondly stable across early infanthood/childhood
(c) Oversaw increased paternal sensitivity.
These results increases our understanding of the factors of early father-child attachment, and determines the need to consider other alternative domains of fathers' parental skills and vice versa relations between fathering moral factors and father-child security.
A father provides moral development through showing proper attitudes and behaviors. The child associates safety from harm with the security that the father portrays. For example whenever a child wrongs its mother it runs to the father for safety or in the case of visitors who happened to be strangers it does not recognize in the homestead, the child runs to the father for protection.
At most times, fathering quality was assessed through a father’s availability, responsibility and engagement with the child and also participation to the child’s activities. The closeness or time spent with a child predicts better feedback for children because fathers can effectively oversee and associate with them while teaching them moral values.
In order to understand more effectively the effects of fathers on a child and its behavior, Marshall, English and stewart(2001) did a longitudinal study and got findings that showed no changes in children between the ages of 3 to 4, while children at the ages of 6 exhibited no or lower signs of aggression and depression when a father/ father-like figure was present in a child’s early life.
