Father Interaction and Separation Protest

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Developmental Psychology1973, Vol. 9, No. 1,83-90

Father InteractionandSeparation ProtestELIZABETH SPELKE, PHILIP ZELAZO, JEROM E K A G A N ,2ANDMILTON KOTELCHUCK

Harvard UniversityThirty-six 1-year-old middle-c lass chi ldren with fathers w ho spent dif-ferential time with them at home were observed in two experimentalcontexts separated by 2 weeks. In the first, each infant w as shown six toeight repetitions of three different nonsocial events followed by a change inth e repeated standard. In the second, each infant experienced th e u n a n -nounced entrances and depar tures of his mother, father , and a femalestranger. The infants who were most upset when alone with the strangercame f rom low-father- interac t ion famil ies and became bored most rapidlywith the nonsocial stimuli. The infants who were least fearful with thes t ranger came f rom high-father- interac t ion famil ies and displayed th egreatest interest in and smiling to the inanimate stimuli. It was arguedthat c rying or protest to separat ion is a complex phenomenon inf luencedby discrepancy, temperament, and level of cognitive development and is nota sensitive indexof the intensity of thechild'semotional bond to hisparent.

Infant protest following separation fromth e motherhas been used as ap artial indexof the strength of the mo ther-infant bond , inwhich case it is assumed that the strengthofthat bond covaries with th e amount of so-cial intera ction (Schaffer&Em erson,1964).Ainsworth and her colleagues (Ainsworth1963, 1967; A insw orth & Bell, 1970; A in-sworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1971) ha ve ques-tioned that practice and suggested that sep-aration fear reflects an insecure at tachmentbetween infant an d mother. One of the rea-sons for the ambiguity surrounding th erela-tion of this phenomenon to the child-parentbond is that separation protest ismost oftenmeasured in a setting in which a motherleaves herchild either in an unfamiliar roomor in a familiar roomwith an unfamiliar per-son (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970; Fleener &Cairns, 1970; Littenberg, Tulkin, &Kagan,1971).It is not clear, there fore, wh ether theprimary cause of protest is disruption of orThis research was suppor ted in part by Re-

search Grant HD-4299 f rom th e National Insti-tute of Chi ld Heal th and H u ma n D e v e l o p me n t ,U.S . Pu bl ic Hea l th Service, Carnegie Corporat ionof New Y o r k , and the Nat ion al Sc ience Foundat ionCollaborative ResearchGrantGS33048.2 Requests fo r reprints should be sent to JeromeKagan, 1510 William James Hall, Harvard Uni-vers i ty ,Ca mb r idge , Massachuse t t s 02138 .

threat to the affective tie to the mother orexposure to anu nus ual event that canno tbeassimilated. Several studies affirm Ain-sworth's view that separation protest is notnecessarily indicativeof a s trong attachment.Passman and Weisberg(1972) observed thatseparation protest was attenuated if the in-fant had his favorite blanket when he wasalone in the strange room. Kotelchuck(19 72) reported tha t protest did not occurfollowing every materna ldepar ture;childrencried when left with th e s tranger but notwhen left with the father. Moreover, despitelarge differences in maternal and paternalcontact athom e, protes twas aslikely to fol-low separation from father as separationfrom mother .The imm ediate incentive for the presentstudy was the unexpected observation (Ko-telchuck, 1972) that 1-year-old infantswithfathers who interactedminimally with themshowed more separation protest than thosewho experienced more frequent father inter-action. Interpretation of this association isnot immediately clear. Hence, wewished tosee if it could be replicated with a prioriselectionof the father-interaction variable.Asecond purpose was to inquire further intothe cognitive foundations of separation dis-tress. Lit tenberg et al . ( 1 9 7 1 ) found little

83


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84 SPELKE, ZELAZO, K A G A N , A ND KO TELCH U CKseparation protest in a home setting whenthe mother departed by a door which sheused f requent ly , bu t considerable apprehen-sion when th e mother exited through a doorwhich she used rarely.This result suggeststha t separation distress occurs when thechild detects adiscrepant event that he can-not assimilate. If so,childrenprone tosepa-ration distress might also react in a vigilantway to other classes of discrepant experi-ence. Hence, w e inquired into th e cross-situational stability between behavior toparental separation and behavior to an un-expected, nonsocial event.

MethodSubjects

The subjects were 36 firstborn, Caucasian 1-year-olds, half boys and half girls, from typicalmiddle-class Massachusetts families. At least oneparent had received a bachelor of arts or bachelorof science degree; the other parent had completedat least 1 year of post high school tr ainin g. Nomother was employed in a full-time job or in-volved in activities that kept her from her childmore than 20 hours per week. All children visitedth e laboratory twice, initially at H V i months an dagain at 12 mo nths with parental interview s oc -curr ingbetween the twovisits.Father Inteview

Each father was interviewed by the senior au-thor in order to gain sufficient information toplace him in one of three groups: high, medium,and low fathe r interactio n, with 6 boys and 6 girlsin each group. The assignment of fatherswhichwas made without knowledge of the child's behav-ior in either laboratory setting and before the as-sessment of separation protest was based on fivevariables: amount of time spent with the child, ex-tent of participation in child care,sensitivity to thechild's signals, father's sense of importance as aninteracting parent, and general responsiveness.Fathers were categorized as low, medium, orhigh on the first two variables, which were evalu-ated from straightforward questions about thefathers' and babies' schedules and parental divi-sion of caretaking responsibilities. Evaluation ofeach of the remaining three variables was basedon tape-recorded answers to longer,morepersonalquestions which permitted fathers to be catego-rized low, me diu m , or hi gh . The variables sensitiv-ity, sense of importance, and responsiveness eachcontributed one ninth toward the final categoriza-tion (or one third as a composite qualitativevariable). Amount of time spent with th e childand caretaking (the less subjectiv e variable s) eachcontributed one third to the final categorization.Fathers whose scores on all variables were in

agreement posed no problem for assign me nt.Fathers with two scores in one category and onein another were assigned to the former category.Level of fa ther interaction was assessed independ-ently by two raters. There was complete agree-ment between the raters in 75% of the cases an ddisagreement by one category in the r e ma in ingcases. Final scores were based o n discu ssion be-tween th e judges.Separation Protest

Each subject was observed at 12 months in anunfami l ia r settingin which presence or absence ofmother , fa ther , and female stranger w as experi-mental ly manipula ted in a procedure that repli-cated the one used by Kotelchuck (1972). Thesetting was a room 18 x 21 feet designed to re-semble a living room. Toys were placed in thecenter of a carpeted floor; chairs, a couch, and astationary video camera were against the walls. Aone-way mirror opposite the video camera ran thelength of one wall, behind which were a moveablevideo camera, video recorder, an d sound equip-ment. All infant behavioral variables were codedfrom videotape recordings of the entire session.Initially each subject was placed in the center ofth e room facing his parents, who sat in chairsagainst the mirror. The 39-minute procedure wascomposed of 13 episodes, which varied the per-sons who stayed in the room with th e child. Every3minutes one of the three adults either entered ordeparted according to the following schedule con-ditions: condition, 1, mo ther and f ather in roomwith child; 2, father only; 3, father and stranger; 4,stranger only; 5, stranger and mother; 6, motheronly; 7, mother and father; 8, mother only; 9,mother and stranger; 10, stranger only; 11,stranger and fa ther ; 12,father only; and 13, fatherand mother .All subjects received th e same schedule, for Ko-telchuck (1 9 7 2 ) found no effects of order on thechild's behavior. The parents were instructed toread magazines and to refrain from ini t ia t ingi n-teraction with their child, although they were al-lowed to respond natur al ly but min imally to thechild-initiated interact ions. If , however, th e childwas f r e t f u l th e parents were instructed to interactwith th e child as much as necessary to comfor thim. Eight female college students, who acted asstrangers, were given instructions similar to thoseof th e parents. If crying continued for 45 secondswhen th e child was alone with th e stranger, th eparent scheduled to ente r th e room next w as sentin earlier. This change in procedure wasnecessaryfor 12 children. The average lengths of the firstan d second stra nge r-alo ne episodes were 160 and146 seconds out of a ma x imum t ime of 180 sec-onds.The following infant behaviors were coded fromth e videotape recording: duration ( in seconds) ofcrying; fretting; playing with toys; looking atmother , fa ther , stranger, and door; proximity tomother , father , stranger , and door; touchingmother, father, stranger, and door; as well as


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FATHER INTERACTION A ND SEPARATION PROTEST 85number of vocalizations to mother, father, an dstranger; and number of nonsocial vocalizations.These variables were coded for each minute of the39-minute session. The records of 12 ran do m lyselected infants were scored by two independentcoders; the mean intercoder reliability was .92witha range from .80 to.99.When a stranger-alone session was terminatedearly because th e childwas severely upset, extrap-olated v alues were used in the analyses. All varia-bles were given a score of zero for the time re-maining in the 3-m inute period, except crying,which was given th e maximum value for the re-maining time. If proximity an d touching were oc -curring at the t ime of term inatio n, these variableswere also giventhe maximum value .Each variable was summed for each of the 13conditions, and similar conditions were pooled todetermine th e extent to whichth e infants behaveddifferently with mother, father, and stranger.Analyses of variance for two independent varia-bles (level of father interactionan d sex) and onerepeated measure (successive conditions in whichchildwaswith varied ad ults) w ere computed.ReactiontoDiscrepancy

Two weeks before the separation session eachsubject came to a different laboratory room an dwas exposed to three different procedures designedto measure reactions to unexpected visual discrep-ancy (Kagan, 1971). A relatively novel event wasrepeated for a fixednumber of trials followedby at ransformat ion of that standard. Each child sat onhismother's lap in front of a stage which resem-bled a puppet theater. A black curtain extendedfrom th e right side of the stage and concealed tw ocoders; a third experimenter presented stimulith rough slits in the curtain. The three procedureswerecalledcube, light,an dcar-doll.Cube. In the first sequence, the examiner lifteda 2-inch orange cube from abox,moved it acrossth e stage in a zigzag motion, and returned it to thebox. After six standard trials, a IVi-inch orangecubethe transformationwas presented in thesame manner for three trials, followed by a returnof the origina l larger cube for three additionaltrials.Light. In the second sequence, the examinermoved an orange rod in a circular arc from left toright unti l it touched one of three colored lights.On contact, al l three lights lit. After eight suchrepetitions, the exa mi ner rested his hand on thero d without moving it, and 3 seconds later th elights lit.This tran sfor m ation occurred five times,followed by three repetitionsof the original stand-ard.Car-doll. In the third sequence, th e examinerse t a car in motion down a ramp toward a styro-foam object which fell on contact. Following eightrepetitions, five transformation trials occurred inwhich th e doll did not fall when hit by thecar, fol-lowed by three presentationsof the original stand-ar d event.The major dependen tvariables coded werefixa-

tion of the stimulus event, positive vocalization,smiling, and fretting (in seconds). Intercoder reli-abilities for these four variables were all above.90. These four behaviors, as well as selected stim-ulus events in each procedure, were simultane-ously recorded on an eigh t-channel Grass poly-graph. The data were analyzed fo r four blocks ofthree trials each. In all three sequences, Block 1consisted of the first three standard trials, Block 2of th e last three standard trials, an d Block 4 of thethree return trials. Block 3consisted of the threetransformation trials for the cube sequence and ofthe first, second, and fourth transformation trialsinthe lighta ndcar-doll sequences.

ResultsBehavior toSeparationAs Kotelchuck (1972) reported origi-nally, departure of one parent did not pro-voke much crying or disruption of play aslong as the other parent remained in theroom. Crying occurred primarily when thechildwasleftalonewiththestranger.Analy-ses ofvariance were computed inwhich theindependent variables were alone withstranger, alone with father alone withmother, and the dependent variables wereduration of crying, fretting, and playing.Children cried and fretted more but playedless when alone withthe stranger than witheither parent F = 17.86 for crying,F 19.39 for fretting, F = 41.36 for playing,d f 2/60 and p


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86 SPELKE, ZELAZO, KAGAN, AND KOT ELCHUCK

45

305

8 15

Mother Father StrangerFIG. 1. Mean duration of crying when the childis left alone with each of three adults .

data revealed theopposite effect. High-fath-er-interaction children, when alone with thestranger, showed little crying, fretting, ordisruption of play; low-father-interactionchildren showed the most crying and maxi-m ald isruption of play F = 3.32 for crying,p


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FATHER INTERACTION AND SEPARATION PROTEST 87

100

803>.oo 608

40

20

Father Interaction o- medium

high

Mother Father StrangerFIG. 2. Mean duration of crying when alone with each adult as a func-tionof levelo f interaction with father.

cussion is devoted to alternative interpreta-tions of this phenomenon. The belief thatcrying to separation reflects intensity of at-tachment to aparent (as aresult offrequentinteraction) is not supported. Although thechildren spent more t imeat home with theirmothers than their fathers, they cried asmuch when their father left them alone witha stranger as when their mother did. More-over, thechildren of high-interacting fathers,who should have been most strongly at-tached to them, cried th e least when theirfather departed, while children who inter-acted minimally with their fathers at home,and should have been weakly attached, criedth e most when he left. Further, the attach-ment interpretationhas no way tohandletherelation between irri tabili ty, boredom, andlack of smiling to the nonsocial visual pro-cedures andhigh sepa rationprotest.Let us, therefore, turn to a second inter-pretation which has been suggested earlier(K agan , 1972; Kotelchuck, 1 9 7 2) , namely,that a child's protest to separation is the re-sult of being exposed to a discrepant eventtha t he cannot a ssimilate or act upon . In-fants of all ages may react to unusual or un-expected events with fear, stranger anxietybeing one of the most comm on examples.Ifth e child can make an instrumental action

that either removesh imfrom th efear-induc-ing situation or alters it, then behavioralsigns of fear will beattenuated. Hence, cryto maternal separat ionisreduced if the childis able to locomote to the mother in a labo-

femaleo- male

o- 4oos

I IMother Father Stranger

FIG. 3. Sex differences in vocalization to eachof th ethree adults acrossal l conditions.


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88 SPELKE ZELAZO KAGAN AND KOTELCHUCKratory (Rheingold&Eckerman, 1970) or inthe more natural home setting (Stayton,Ainsworth,&Main, 1972) .But whether the child perceives an eventas discrepant depends on his experienceandmaturi ty . If separation fear is, in part, th eproduct of an unresolved puzzle, it is neces-sary to explain why this reaction is mostlikely to occur between 8 and 18 months,rather tha n earlieror later.The results of several experiments haveled to the hypothesis that toward the end ofthe first year most infants begin to activatehypotheses to aid interpretation of unusualevents (Kagan, 1971, 1972) . It is possiblethat separation protest occurs when the childis mature enough to generate hypothesesabout th e location of his caretaker but notmature enough to resolve that question.3 Arecent replication of Kotelchuck's originalexperiment in a poor, lower-class area ofAntigua, Guatemala, revealed that despitethe markedly different experiences of thechildren in the two cultu ral settings, separa-

3M. D. S .Ainsworth (personal communication,1972) has suggested that th e fear- inducing dis-crepancy is relevant to the child's expectationabout or confidence in his mother's accessibility.This expectation could be viewed as similar to ournotion of a hypothesis about th e location of thecaretaker .

8

S |

8 12

1

o =

tionprotest peaked at the same age in Gua-temala as it did in Cambridge, Massachu-setts (namely, 12 to 18 m onth s). Moreover,Stevens (1971) found no difference in ageof onset of separation protest between in -fants raised in an institution in which eachchild had an average of 15 caretakers aweek and infants raised in nuclear families.Stevens' data and interpretations are in ac-cord with our suggestion that occurrenceofseparation fear isdependent ,in part , on thematuration of specific cognitive functions.The data from th e nonsocial light se-quences are also supportive of this cognitiveinterpretation of separation protest. The in-fants who cried least to separation remainedmost interested in the light sequence duringthe tra nsfo rm ation trials when the re was a3-second period during which no dynamicmovement occurred. Thiswas the only pro-cedure tha t contained a period d urin g thetrial inwhichn o movement occurred. Exten-siven ormative data on these episodes for in-fants 3 1 2 to \\l/2 months of age indicatethatch ildren und er 9 m onths are more likelyto turn away from th e s t imulusand/or fretduring the transformation trials to the lightthan to the transformation trials of the cubeand car-doll episodes. This finding is reason-able if one assumes that only a child mature

Cry ing w i th s t ranger noneo 1-59 secondsx 60-180seconds

I JEarlyStandard LateStandard Transformation ReturnBlock

FIG. 4. Mean total fixation to the light episode by trial block as afunct ionof a m o u n t of cry ing when a lone wi th th e stranger.


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FATHER INTERACTION AND SEPARATION PROTEST 89enough to act ivate some representat ion ofth e original event and relate it to the trans-formed event would remain interested, sinceth e actual event contains 3 seconds of noaction. Hence, it is possible that the 1-year-old infants who remained at tent ive tothe l ight transfo rm ation we re intellectuallyprecocious to those w ho became irri table.Ifthese same children also activated hy-pothesesin theseparation procedure thatex-plained th e experience of being left alonewith th est range wom an, they mightno t havebecome irri table. The positive relation be-tween high father interaction at home andlo w separation protest can be viewed as sup-portiveofthis argument if one assumes thata child who has frequent interact ions wi thbothparentshas access to agreater varietyof experience and, as a result, might be cog-nitively advanced. The essential theme inthis explanation is that the children who didnotprotest wereable to assimilate the dis-crepant experience and their cognit ive pre-cocitywasdue,inpart,to thefrequent inter-act ion at home wi th two, ra ther than one,parents.A n alternativea nd more parsimoniousin -terpretationisthatinthosefamiliesin whichthe father remained home a great deal of thetime, the mothers were able to leave thehouse moreoften than mothersfrom familieswith low-interacting fathe rs.Hence, childrenin the high-father- interaction homes wouldhave had a greater opportunity to becomeaccustomed to the presence of a caretakerother thanthemotherand to extinguish anx-iety to the exp erience of the mother 's depa r-ture.There are other unexpectedbutintriguingf indingsthat m aycomplicate both interpreta-t ions and imply that an intra individual t em-peramenta l factor may be contr ibut ing var i -ance to the p he n o me n o n of separat ion fear .The noncrying infants smiled more to allthree nonsocial visual events, al though smil-ing was unrelated to level of father interac-tion at home. Al though smil ingcan reflectassimilation of a di screpancywhich is inaccord wi th the ear l ier explanat ion inde-pendent longi tudinal data suggest that smil-in g during the f irst y e a r is at e m p e r a m e n t a lat t r ibute wi th some degree of heri tabi l i ty( Kagan , 1971). High-smil ing infants dis-

played a slower tempo of play wi th , toysand a longer period of attentiveness to vis-ual events than low-smiling infants. T helongitudinal study just referred to containeda separation episode in which a mother lefther 8-month-old child alone in a st rangeroom. A bout one half of the infants showedseparation protest, and these children, liketh e infants in this study , were bored m orequickly and were moreirritableto the non-social visual episodes. Moreover, Bronson(1971) analyzed separation protestbehaviorfo r tw o independent samples and found, fo rmales, that early onset of fear w as signifi-cantly related to intense fearfulness of astrange person at 1 year of age. Bronsonsuggested tha t genetically based con stitu-tionaldifferencesmay be interacting withex-periential factors to produce th e observedvariations in the development of fear reac-tions[p.63].Psychologists andparentshave suggestedon many occasions that some infants areprone to fretful irritability, some ofwhich isin th e service of fear, from th e ear ly monthsof lifeand retain this dispositionfor 1 or 2years. It is possible that this individu al dif-ference dimension, whichmay be only par-tially related to qu ality of social ex perienc e,is contributing variance to the separationdisplay. It may be more than coincidencethat despite the various samples studied inthis and other cultures, the proportion ofchildren8 to 18 monthsold who protest toseparation usually ranges between 20% and60%.The fact thatthe proportion rarelyap-proaches 100% argues for the influence of atemperamental a t t r ibute .In sum , protest to parental departureseems to be less clearly related to intensityof emot ional a t tachment to a parent than tothe child's level of cognitive development,experience wi th parental departures in thehom e set t ing, and, perhaps, atemp eramenta lat tr ibute. This simple reaction appears to bemore compl ica ted than m any have surmised .

REFERENCESA I N S W O R T H M. D. S. The developmentof infant-mother interaction among the Ganda. In B. M.Foss (Ed.) , Determinants of infant behavior.II. New Y o r k : Wiley, 1963.A I N S W O R T H M. D. S. Infancy in Uganda: Infant


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90 SPELKE, ZELAZO, KAGAN, A N D KOTELCHUCKcare and the growth of love. Ba l t imore : JohnsHop kins U nive rs i ty Press , 1967.AINSWORTH, M. D. S., & BELL, S . A t t a c h m e n t ,explora t ion, and separa t ion: I l lus tra ted by thebehavior of one-year-olds in a s t range s i tua t ion.Child Development, 1970, 41 49-67.A I N S W O R T H M. D. S ., BELL, S. M. V ., & S T A Y T O ND. J . Indiv idua l differences in s t r ange -s i tua t ionbehavior of one-year-olds. In H. R. Schaffer( E d . ) , The origins of human social relations.London: Academic Press , 1971.B R O N S O N G.W.Fear of the unfami l i a r in h u m a ninfants . In H. R. Schaffer ( E d . ) , The origins ofhumansocial relations. London: Academic Press ,1971.F L E E N E R D., & C A I R N S R. At t a c h m e n t b e h a v i o r sin h uma n in fan ts : D isc r imina t ive voca l i za tionon ma te rna l sepa ra t ion .Developmental Psychol-ogy, 1970, 2,215-223.K A G A N J. Change and continuity in infancy. NewYork: Wiley , 1971.K A G A N J . Do in fan ts t h i n k ? Scientific American,1972, 226 74-81.K O T E L C H U C K M. The na tu re of a child's tie to hisf a the r . Unpubl i shed doc to ra l d i s se r ta t ion , Ha r -vard Univers i ty , 1972.

L I T T E N B E R G R ., T U L K I N S., & K A G A N J. Cogni-t ive components of separa t ion anxie ty . Devel-opmental Psychology, 1971, 4, 387-388.P A S S M A N R., & W E I S B E R G P. M o t h e r and secur-i ty blank ets as fam il ia r iza t ion objects for ch i l-dren 's p lay behavior (The Linus phenomenonis r ea l ) . Paper presented at the mee t ing of theEastern Psychologica l Associa t ion, Boston, Apri l1972.R H E I N G O L D H. L., & E C K E R M A N C. O. The in fan tsepara tes h imself f rom his mother .Science, 1970,168, 78-90.S C H A F F E R H. R ., &EMERSON, P. E. The develop-ment of socia l a t tachments in infancy . Mono-graphs of the Society for Research in ChildDevelopment, 1964, 29(3, Serial N o. 9 4 ) .S T A Y T O N D. J., A I N S W O R T H M. D. S., & M A I NM. B. The deve lopment ofsepa ra t ion behav io rinthe firstyear of life:Protest,following and greet-i n g . Balt imore , Md .: Au thor , 1972. ( M i m e o )STEVENS, A. G. At tachment behav io r , s epa ra t ionanxiety and s tranger anxie ty . In H. R. Schaffer( E d . ) , The origins of human social relations.L o n do n : Academic Press, 1971.

(Received November 16 , 1972)

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Father Interaction and Separation Protest