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Chiland cites Dorothy Burlingham's 1973 article, "The Preoedipal Infant-Father Relationship," which describes the stimulating function of the father; the father is seen as the punishing and inhibiting figure as well as the protective one. Lacan sees the father as protector of the child as he pulls it away from the mother's desire, "which would otherwise reduce the child to being her phallus." Chiland points to changes in the last ten years in which fathers have become more involved as the caretakers of infants. But what is the father's function? She concludes that there are particular, rather than general function; that is, the functions of a particular father and mother, their relationship, and the father's role, presence, or absence. She outlines the recent discoveries of infants' capacity to imitate, to respond to human language, to discriminate smells, to respond to heartbeats and in general to search for and discover the mother. All this raises questions about the "normal autistic" aspect of infancy and also about the role of the father in this period, since he does not possess attributes that the infant responds to preferentially and innately, such as the smell of colostrum, high-pitched sounds, or the breast. Fathers who are nurturant as well as "dominant" and involved with the child predispose to "masculine" sons. But many questions remain about persons who were raised predominantly by fathers. The different effects of the father on boys and girls also remain uncertain.