Adult Attachment Style Predicts Parents’ Empathy for their Children: Evidence from Preschool through Middle Childhood

• In Event: 1-138 - Adult Attachment Style: Implications for Parenting Behavior and Child Outcomes

Integrative Statement

BACKGROUND: Parents’ ability to empathize with their children—to feel concern for their children’s emotional experiences and to take their perspective—is a key competency allowing parents to understand and connect with their children (Stern, Borelli, & Smiley, 2015). Parental empathy has been shown to contribute to positive outcomes such as secure child attachment (Oppenheim, Koren-Karie, & Sagi, 2001; Stern et al., 2015) and to children’s own empathy (e.g., van Lissa et al., 2014). Extensive research from social psychology points to the importance of attachment style in predicting adults’ empathy (see Shaver et al., 2016), but little research has examined the contribution of attachment style to empathy specifically in the parent-child relationship. This paper tests the hypothesis that parents with lower attachment avoidance (discomfort with emotional closeness and vulnerability) and anxiety (worry about abandonment by relationship partners) will show greater empathy and less distress in response to their children’s emotions. We test this hypothesis using a multi-dimensional, multi-sample approach, using data from four studies of parents of children spanning preschool to school age.

METHOD: Data were drawn from four studies of parents and children; only cases with full data available for attachment and empathy were included in analyses (total N = 348). The samples were racially and socioeconomically diverse and included mothers and fathers of children from preschool through middle childhood (see Table 1 for sample characteristics).
In each study, parents completed versions of the Experiences in Close Relationships scale (ECR; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998), a widely used self-report measure of adult attachment avoidance and anxiety, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980), a multi-dimensional empathy scale adapted to assess parents’ empathy for a specific child (IRI-Parent; Stern & Cassidy, 2015). The IRI-P includes subscales assessing parental Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, and Personal Distress. Sample 1 completed both measures at two time points approximately 12 weeks apart. Samples 2-4 completed the measures at a single time point.

ANALYSES: Covariates for all samples were selected a priori and included child sex, parent education, and household income (income not available for Sample 1). For each sample, multiple linear regressions predicting each dimension of parental empathy were performed, with covariates entered in Step 1 and attachment avoidance and anxiety entered together in Step 2.

RESULTS: Results are presented in Table 2. Findings consistently showed that attachment avoidance contributed negatively to parents’ empathic concern and perspective taking; results for attachment anxiety were equivocal. For personal distress, coefficients for attachment anxiety and avoidance were generally in the expected direction (positive), but results were non-significant.

DISCUSSION: In the first body of work to examine the contribution of attachment style to dimensions of parental empathy, we show that parents with lower attachment avoidance report experiencing greater empathic concern for their children and greater tendencies to take their perspective; these results replicated across four samples representing diverse populations and spanning multiple developmental periods. The role of attachment anxiety was inconsistent and often null. Implications for attachment theory, parenting science, and practice will be discussed.

Authors

• Jessica A Stern, University of Maryland, College Park
  Presenting Author

• Jacquelyn Gross, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bonnie Brett, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tracy Riggins, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Megan H Fitter, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emilia Milheim, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jude Cassidy, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland-College Park
  Non-Presenting Author