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From the moment of birth, a child first of all needs a mother. It is biologically determined that she is the one who breastfeeds the baby, and his survival depends on his mother. The mother takes on most of the baby’s care. The role of the father in this period of the child’s life is, as a rule, minimal. Most fathers do not know what to do with their child until he is 3–4 years old, until he begins to walk, talk and think. Of course, fathers change their babies’ diapers, bottle feed them, walk and play with them. But this reveals the father’s role as a caring parent. The role of the father as a parent, as a rule, appears along with the child’s awareness of himself as an individual. This is marked by the replacement of his own name in the child’s statements about himself with the pronoun “I” (not “Sasha went for a walk”, but “I went for a walk”). At the age of 3–4 years, the child goes through the first stage of separation from his parents. This is usually accompanied by disobedience, rebellion, and stubbornness. The manifestation of such behavior in a child awakens in fathers the role of a nurturing parent.
The older a child gets, the more he begins to need his father. Need consciously, i.e. clearly understanding what he expects from his father. In preschool age, when the child’s self-esteem is developing, the father puts into the child’s mind the idea of what is good and what is bad, what is…
