Different Perspectives: Four- to 10-year-olds’ versus Mothers’ Beliefs about Child Attachment

• In Event: Early childhood parenting

Abstract

When assessing attachment in children under age 8, researchers commonly exclude the child’s voice and rely on parent reports. Underlying assumptions are that young children are unreliable reporters and that parents accurately perceive how their children feel. Prior work, however, reveals that parents have difficulty taking their child’s perspective. For example, parents judge that their children feel more optimistic and less worried than children self-report, indicating a parental positivity bias. Furthermore, parents expect their children’s emotions to align with their own, suggesting an egocentric bias (Lagattuta et al. 2012). We reasoned that similar patterns may appear when parents and children both evaluate their relationship quality.
We investigated children’s versus mothers’ perceptions of child attachment.
Key questions included: (1) Can children reliably report on the mother-child relationship? (2) Is there agreement between child and mother perspectives? (3) Do mothers exhibit a positivity bias? (4) Do mothers show an egocentric bias?
Four- to 10-year-olds (N=154) reported how often they experienced thoughts and emotions reflective of secure attachment (e.g., “It helps me to talk to my mom when I feel bad”) using a 5-point pictorial scale ranging from 0 (none of the time) to 4 (all of the time). Mothers predicted how their child would respond to the same 10 items (e.g., “It helps my child to talk to me when they feel bad”). A subset of children (N=90) and mothers (N=75) repeated this assessment about one week later. Mothers (N=132) also responded to the same measure to report their attachment to their primary caregiver. We scored reports for an average frequency rating.
Children 6 years and older showed acceptable to very good internal consistency when reporting their attachment (.63<< .86); however, 4- to 5- year-olds had a lower internal consistency (=.49). All age groups and mothers exhibited strong test-retest reliability (rs>.68, ps<.001), indicating that they held stable views of the relationship.
Whereas mother and child reports correlated in children 6 years and older (rs>.27, ps<.042), mothers and 4- to 5-year-olds held unrelated views (r=-.18, p=.24). A 3 (Age: 4/5 years, 6/7 years, 8/10 years) x 2 (Reporter: parent report of child, child self-report) repeated measures ANOVA resulted in a main effect for Reporter, qualified by an Age x Reporter interaction, Fs>14.26, ps<.001. Reflective of a positivity bias (Figure 1), mothers of all age groups judged that their children experience more frequent thoughts and emotions indicative of secure attachment than children self-reported (|t|s >3.55, ps<.001).
Suggesting an egocentric bias, mothers’ reports of their own attachment correlated with how they evaluated their child’s attachment (r=.23, p<.01). A 3 (Age) x 2 (Target: parent self-report, parent report of child) repeated measures ANOVA revealed main effects for Age and Target (Fs>4.85, ps<.05). Mothers perceived a generational positive change, viewing their child to be more securely attached to them than they are to their primary caregiver (Figure 2).
These findings demonstrate how challenging it is for mothers to take their child’s perspective, highlighting the importance of widening research to include the child’s voice.

Authors

• Maritza Miramontes, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• Hannah Jean Kramer, Queen’s University Belfast

• Karen Hjortsvang Lara, Southwestern University

• Kristin Hansen Lagattuta, University of California - Davis