Differential Associations between Fathers’ Anxious and Avoidant Attachment, Parental Well-Being, and Emotion Sensitivity

• In Event: 2-006 - Attachment Styles: A Window Into Emotional Processes Across Development

Integrative Statement

Attachment and emotion research suggests that parents’ attachment styles predict parental well-being and affective communication with their children (Jones et al., 2014). Fathers with insecure attachment styles report lower parenting efficacy (Howard, 2010) and show less warmth in interaction with their children (Cohn et al., 1992). Fathers’ anxious and avoidant attachment has been linked to measures of parental well-being, but findings are inconsistent across studies (Jones et al., 2014). Mothers with avoidant attachment show low positive affect during problem-solving with their preschoolers; mothers with anxious attachment show high anger (Adam et al., 2004; Crowell & Feldman, 1988). Very few studies have explored associations among attachment styles and emotion expression among father-child dyads. In the current study, fathers reported on their attachment and parental well-being and we observed father-toddler dyads in a teaching-learning interaction. We predicted that fathers’ anxious and avoidant attachment styles would differentially predict well-being and emotion sensitive behaviors (i.e., their own emotion expression and responses to children’s emotion expression).

Participants were 70 fathers from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds. Fathers self-reported anxious (e.g., “I worry that my partner will not want to stay with me”) and avoidant (e.g., “I prefer not to show a partner how I feel”) attachment using the ECR-R (Fraley et al., 2000) and parental well-being using the adapted SHSP (e.g., “Compared to most parents, I consider myself: less happy, to more happy”) (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999). Fathers were observed teaching their toddlers a task they believed they could not complete on their own.

Father teaching behaviors were coded using the NCAST PCI-Teach assessment tool (Barnes & Eyres, 1979). We coded two subscales: social-emotional growth fostering, which includes 11 items capturing fathers’ positive affective communication and warmth (e.g., Caregiver laughs or smiles at child during teaching) and response to distress, which includes 11 items assessing fathers’ responses to their children’s distress and soothing behaviors (e.g., Caregiver makes soothing verbal/non-verbal responses).

Differential associations of fathers’ anxious and avoidant attachment with parental well-being and sensitivity were tested in regression models. After controlling for demographic variables including father age, education, income, and ethnicity, and child age and gender, we examined anxious and avoidant attachment together. The association of fathers’ self-reported anxious attachment with parental well-being was significant, b = -0.22, SE = .09, t = -2.44, p = .02, with ∆R2 = .17, and it was marginally associated with their response to children’s distress during teaching, b = -0.38, SE = .22, t = -1.71, p = .09, with ∆R2 = .05. Fathers’ avoidant attachment was significantly associated with social emotional growth fostering behavior, b = -0.49, SE = .17, t = -2.81, p = .007, with ∆R2 = .10.

Results suggest that fathers with higher anxious attachment communicate lower parental well-being and show less sensitivity to their child’s distress, whereas fathers with higher avoidant attachment communicate less positive affect and warmth in interaction. Work with forthcoming data on mothers from these families will examine how parents’ attachment styles and affective behaviors interact to predict children’s emotion expression.

Authors

• Katherine V Buttitta, Claremont Graduate University
  Presenting Author

• Patricia A Smiley, Pomona Colege
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gerin Elizabeth Gaskin, Claremont Graduate University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Pedroza, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author