Why do fathers matter?

I recently had a clinical interview with a 14-year-old girl, Tanja, who had been admitted to our child psychiatry unit because of aggressive behavioural dysregulation, severe narcissistic problems, and the feeling of being constantly watched by other people. At the beginning of our conversation she stated that she had experienced a “bad childhood”: “My dad was lazy and he beat up my mom.” As the father had long since left the family and migrated to another country she had not met him for several years. Her mother had told her “all the bad things about her dad” and she now felt guilty and bad herself, because she had been her dad’s favourite. And whenever she exhibited aggressive behaviour, her mother claimed that she had inherited her father’s character. Ever since the classic work of Lamb (1976, 1977), developmental researchers and clinicians have paid increasing attention to the role of fathers in child development. Whereas initially fathers were only regarded as important for older children, there has been a growing body of research on the significance of fathers during pregnancy and early childhood. In this special issue, researchers from the United States, Europe, and Israel report their findings on the significance of fathers in early childhood, especially in high-risk populations. The four US papers report longitudinal data on lowincome fathers from the US Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. This nationwide project was started in the late nineties with thorough evaluations of highrisk families and their infants, including the assessment of early parental attitudes and parent-infant interactions. Now, more than 10 years later, the researchers are able to use this invaluable data to analyse longitudinal associations between assessments during early infancy and toddlerhood and outcomes in middle childhood, a real treasure of longitudinal research. And as the Early Head Start programs have included fathers whenever possible we are now able extract empirical evidence on the long-term influence of