Overview to Part I: Fathers, Developmental Systems, and Relationships

Abstract

In his fascinating historical account on the “Origins of Fatherhood,” Kraemer (1991, p. 377) asserts that “Fatherhood is a human social invention and patriarchy, the rule of the father” emerged from recognition that males played an essential role in procreation. While patriarchy rapidly, in historical time, replaced matriarchy and men created male gods to rule over all of the dominions, child rearing during infancy and early childhood became the sole responsibility of women. Therefore, in a more contemporary world it should not be surprising that most theories of early human development were developed by men, they gave special importance to the quality of the mother-child relationship with respect to child outcomes, particularly the negative ones as implied by the concept of “mother blame.” Kraemer references Goodall’s work with Chimpanzee’s, with whom humans share about 99% of their DNA, to illustrate that for non-human primates there is no such concept as “father.” What a difference 1% makes for human primates, who socially constructed the concept of father. Alas, the social construction of fatherhood that humans (men) created did not include having males play any major role in child rearing during the early years of their life. As Kraemer notes, “within a space of a few thousand years, the idea of male parent became the divine leader who could do his own creating by inventing things and controlling people” (p. 390).