A combination of maternal and paternal features discriminates between children with secure and insecure attachment style
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17575/psicologia.1820Keywords:
Adult attachment, attachment security and insecurity, parental involvement, marital satisfaction, parenting stressAbstract
Child-caregiver attachment security has been associated with positive developmental outcomes. However, many aspects related to the parenting environment, besides attachment organization, should be considered in the prediction of offspring’s attachment. We aimed at building an ecological classification model of child attachment based on many variables related to the individual and dyadic features of both parents. Having recruited 150 families, we fed a stepwise logistic regression analysis, aimed at discriminating between secure and insecure child attachment. This contained information regarding parental stress, parental avoidance and anxiety in romantic relationships, quality of the romantic relationship and parental involvement. Paternal responsibility, paternal perception of the quality of the romantic relationship and maternal attachment avoidance were the most discriminative variables in the model (all p<.05). Findings support the importance of not limiting investigations to maternal factors, but rather making the investigation of attachment-related factors broader by assessing maternal, paternal and dyadic features.
Downloads
References
Abidin, R. R. (1990). Parenting Stress Index-short form: Test manual. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia.
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1979). Infant-mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34(10), 932–937. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.932
Ainsworth, M. D. S., Bell, S. M., & Stayton, D. F. (1974). Infant-mother attachment and social development: Socialization as a product of reciprocal responsiveness to signals. In M. P. M. Richards (Ed.), The integration of a child into a social world (pp. 99-135). Cambridge University Press.
Atkinson, L., Goldberg, S., Raval, V., Pederson, D., Benoit, D., Moran, G., Poulton, L., Myhal, N., Zwiers, M., Gleason, K., & Leung, E. (2005). On the relation between maternal state of mind and sensitivity in the prediction of infant attachment security. Developmental Psychology, 41(1), 42-53. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.41.1.42
Attili, G. (2001). Ansia da separazione e misura dell’attaccamento normale e patologico: versione modificata e adattamento italiano del Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) di Klagsbrun e Bowlby. Bologna, Italy: Unicopli.
Bartholomew, K. (1990). Avoidance of intimacy: An attachment perspective. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 7(2), 147-178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407590072001
Belsky, J. (2002). Developmental origins of attachment styles. Attachment & Human Development, 4(2), 166-170. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730210157510
Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Methodological), 57(1), 289-300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2517-6161.1995.tb02031.x
Besser, A., & Priel, B. (2005). The apple does not fall far from the tree: Attachment styles and personality vulnerabilities to depression in three generations of women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(8), 1052-1073. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204274082
Bombi, A. S., Pastorelli, C., Bacchini, D., Di Giunta, L., Miranda, M. C., & Zelli, A. (2011). Attributions and attitudes of mothers and fathers in Italy. Parenting, 11(2-3), 129-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2011.585557
Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Retrospect and prospect. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 52(4), 664-678. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1982.tb01456.x
Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). The Guilford Press.
Cabrera, N. J. (2020). Father involvement, father-child relationship, and attachment in the early years. Attachment & Human Development, 22(1), 134-138. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1589070
Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bradley, R. H., Hofferth, S., & Lamb, M. E. (2000). Fatherhood in the twenty-first century. Child Development, 71(1), 127-136. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00126
Camisasca, E., Miragoli, S., & Di Blasio, P. (2016). Families with distinct levels of marital conflict and child adjustment: Which role for maternal and paternal stress? Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(3), 733-745. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0261-0
Camisasca, E., Miragoli, S., Di Blasio, P., & Feinberg, M. (2019). Co-parenting mediates the influence of marital satisfaction on child adjustment: The conditional indirect effect by parental empathy. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(2), 519-530. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1271-5
Cassibba, R., Coppola, G., Sette, G., Curci, A., & Costantini, A. (2017). The transmission of attachment across three generations: A study in adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 53(2), 396-405. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000242
Cerniglia, L., Cimino, S., & Ballarotto, G. (2014). Mother–child and father–child interaction with their 24‐month‐old children during feeding, considering paternal involvement and the child's temperament in a community sample. Infant Mental Health Journal, 35(5), 473-481. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21466
Clawson, R. E., Davis, S. Y., Miller, R. B., & Webster, T. N. (2018). The case for insurance reimbursement of couple therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 44(3), 512-526. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12263
Cowan, P. A., Cowan, C. P., Pruett, M. K., & Pruett, K. (2019). Fathers’ and mothers’ attachment styles, couple conflict, parenting quality, and children’s behavior problems: An intervention test of mediation. Attachment & Human Development, 21(5), 532-550. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1582600
Diniz, E., Brandão, T., Monteiro, L., & Veríssimo, M. (2021). Father involvement during early childhood: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 13(1), 77-99. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12410
Draper, P., & Beisky, J. (1990). Personality development in evolutionary perspective. Journal of Personality, 58(1), 141-161. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00911.x
Fernandes, C., Monteiro, L., Santos, A. J., Fernandes, M., Antunes, M., Vaughn, B. E., & Veríssimo, M. (2020). Early father-child and mother-child attachment relationships: Contributions to preschoolers’ social competence. Attachment & Human Development, 22(6), 687-704. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1692045
Kuo, P. X., Saini, E. K., Tengelitsch, E., & Volling, B. L. (2019). Is one secure attachment enough? Infant cortisol reactivity and the security of infant-mother and infant-father attachments at the end of the first year. Attachment & Human Development, 21(5), 426-444. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1582595
Lamb, M. E. (1987). Predictive implications of individual differences in attachment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55(6), 817-824. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.55.6.817
Lucassen, N., Tharner, A., Van IJzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Volling, B. L., Verhulst, F. C., Lambregtse-Van den Berg, M. P., & Tiemeier, H. (2011). The association between paternal sensitivity and infant-father attachment security: A meta-analysis of three decades of research. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(6), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025855
Lux, U., & Walper, S. (2019). A systemic perspective on children’s emotional insecurity in relation to father: Links to parenting, interparental conflict and children’s social well-being. Attachment & Human Development, 21(5), 467-484. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1582597
Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters, Growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development Vol. 50 (pp. 66-104). (Serial No. 209).
Merrilees, C. E., Goeke-Morey, M., & Mark Cummings, E. (2008). Do event-contingent diaries about marital conflict change marital interactions? Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(2), 253-262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.11.007
Miranda, M. C., Affuso, G., Esposito, C., & Bacchini, D. (2016). Parental acceptance-rejection and adolescent maladjustment: Mothers’ and fathers’ combined roles. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(4), 1352-1362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0305-5
Monteiro, L., Veríssimo, M., Vaughn, B. E., Santos, A. J., & Bost, K. K. (2008). Secure base representations for both fathers and mothers predict children's secure base behavior in a sample of Portuguese families. Attachment & Human Development, 10(2), 189-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730802113711
Picardi, A., Bitetti, D., Puddu, P., & Pasquini, P. (2000). La scala “Experiences in Close Relationships” (ECL), un nuovo strumento per la valutazione dell’attaccamento negli adulti: Traduzione, adattamento e validazione della versione italiana. [Development and validation of an Italian version of the questionnaire “Experiences in Close Relationships,” a new self-report measure of adult attachment.]. Rivista Di Psichiatria, 35(3), 114-120.
Rollè, L., Prino, L. E., Sechi, C., Vismara, L., Neri, E., Polizzi, C., Trovato, A., Volpi, B., Molgora, S., Fenaroli, V., Ierardi, E., Ferro, V., Lucarelli, L., Agostini, F., Tambelli, R., Saita, E., Riva Crugnola, C., & Brustia, P. (2017). Parenting Stress, mental health, dyadic adjustment: A structural equation model. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 839. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00839
Sette, G., Coppola, G., & Cassibba, R. (2015). The transmission of attachment across generations: The state of art and new theoretical perspectives. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 56(3), 315-326. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12212
Spanier, G. B. (1976). Measuring dyadic adjustment: New scales for assessing the quality of marriage and similar dyads. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.2307/350547
Thompson, R. (2008). Early attachment and later development: Familiar questions, new answers. In J. Cassidy & P. H. Shaver, Handbook of attachment. Theory, Research and Clinical Applications (pp. 348-365). Guilford Press.
van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. (2019). Bridges across the intergenerational transmission of attachment gap. Current Opinion in Psychology, 25, 31-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.014
Verhage, M. L., Fearon, R. M. P., Schuengel, C., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Madigan, S., Roisman, G. I., Oosterman, M., Behrens, K. Y., Wong, M. S., Mangelsdorf, S., Priddis, L. E., Brisch, K.-H., & The Collaboration on Attachment Transmission Synthesis (2018). Examining ecological constraints on the intergenerational transmission of attachment via individual participant data meta-analysis. Child Development, 89(6), 2023-2037. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13085
Vittinghoff, E., & McCulloch, C. E. (2007). Relaxing the rule of ten events per variable in logistic and Cox regression. American Journal of Epidemiology, 165(6), 710-718. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwk052
