Poster #144 - Mothers and Fathers as a Secure Base: A Family Systems Approach

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Both theoretical (Bowlby, 1988) and empirical (e.g., De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997) work underscore the role parental caregiving (i.e., sensitivity) plays in the formation and maintenance of children’s attachment relationships. While children form attachments to multiple caregivers (e.g., Howes & Spieker, 2016), most research focuses on the role of only one, usually the mother. However, paternal sensitivity also supports child security (e.g., Lucassen et al., 2011). With a call for attachment researchers to consider the family as a system (e.g., Bretherton, 2010), recent empirical work has investigated children’s attachment to mother and father (e.g., Lickenbrock & Braungart-Rieker, 2015). Yet attachment research accounting for the potential interdependency of mother-child and father-child subsystems is scant and centers primarily on Strange Situation classifications (e.g., Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2006). The current study uses a family systems approach to examine associations between parental sensitivity and children’s attachment security in naturalistic settings, and the influence that attachment security to one parent has on security to the other.

Sixty-six families (mother, father, child) participated. Children (51.5% female) were 29.21 months old (SD = 4.33); mothers were 31.59 (SD = 5.32) and fathers were 33.22 (SD = 5.38) years old. Most participants were non-Hispanic Caucasian and middle class. Each parent-child dyad was visited once at home and once in the park, for a total of four visits per family. Independent observers described caregiving behavior using the Caregiving Behavior for Preschoolers Q-Set (Posada et al., 1998) and child behavior using the Attachment Q-Set (Waters, 1995). Composite sensitivity and security scores (-1.00 to 1.00) were created by averaging observer descriptions across the two visits and correlating this description with the criterion sort for the ideally sensitive caregiver or secure child, respectively. Descriptives are presented in Table 1. There were no mean-level differences in mother vs. father sensitivity or child security.

Maternal sensitivity was significantly related to child use of her as a secure base, r = .29, p = .02. Similarly, paternal sensitivity was significantly related to use of father as a secure base, r = .35, p = .005 (controlling for income). Interestingly, maternal and paternal sensitivity were not associated (see Table 1), despite security with mother and father being modestly correlated (r = .28, p = .03, controlling for income). Regression analyses (see Table 2) revealed that security with father explained 6% of the variance in security with mother, beyond what was explained by maternal sensitivity. For security with fathers, security with mothers explained a marginally significant (4%) amount of the variance beyond that explained by paternal sensitivity (controlling for income). Results held after reversing order of variable entry. Follow-up analyses testing interactions between sensitivity and security with the other parent were non-significant. Findings suggest that in toddlerhood, sensitive caregiving continues to support child security regardless of parent gender, with maternal and paternal caregiving independent of one another. However, they also highlight the need to consider the quality of child security to both parents to best understand factors impacting secure base use in the formative years.

Authors

• Jill M Trumbell, University of New Hampshire
  Presenting Author

• Laura Anaya, Gonzaga University
  Non-Presenting Author

• German Posada, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author