Parent-child Relations Throughout Life

Karl Pillemer, Kathleen McCartney, Karl Pillemer, Kathleen McCartney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780805808223
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134761814
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The study of parent-child relationships has long been of interest to behavioral scientists, both for its theoretical importance and for its practice and policy implications. There are, however, certain limitations to the knowledge in this area. First, research on parents and children is spread throughout a number of disciplines and as a consequence is not well integrated. Further, there has been little dialogue among researchers concerned with parents of young children and those interested in middle-aged and elderly parents and their offspring. The present volume predicates the notion that there is considerable similarity in the issues explored by researchers on different points of the life course.

Contributions by leading scholars in psychology, sociology, and anthropology are organized into four sections, each of which contains a treatment of at least two stages in the life course. The sections cover attachment in early childhood and in later life, life course transitions, relationships within families, and the influence of social structural factors on parent-child relations. Although the chapters make important contributions to basic research and theory, many also deal with issues of public concern, such as day care, maternal employment, gay and lesbian relationships, and care of the elderly.

I

ATTACHMENT

1

The Parental Side of Attachment

Inge Bretherton

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Zeynep Biringen

University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Doreen Ridgeway

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Until quite recently, attachment theorists and researchers paid rather little heed to the parental experience of attachment relationships. Following Bowlby’s (1958, 1969) theoretical formulations, empirical studies emphasized the infant’s need for a special figure who is emotionally and physically available and thereby facilitates exploration of the environment (secure base), whose sensitive responsiveness in stressful or alarming situations provides reassurance, comfort, and protection (secure haven), whose departure arouses anxiety and whose return is generally welcomed with relief and pleasure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Even when investigators began to explore attachment experiences beyond infancy (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, in press; Cassidy, 1988; Kaplan, 1984; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985; Marvin, 1977), the focus remained on attachment from the filial point of view, whether the assessments were of children or adults.

This neglect of the parental side of attachment is surprising for two reasons. First, findings by Ainsworth and her colleagues (summarized in Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton 1974) had strongly suggested that parental sensitivity and responsiveness are a strong causal factor in the quality of developing attachment relationships. It would therefore seem a natural next step to also probe individual differences in parents’ inner experience of the attachment relationship. Second, spontaneous expressions of parental attachment behavior (watching, warning, retrieving, protecting) are easy to observe in everyday life. Indeed, there have been studies of maternal separation anxiety (Hock, 1984), but these were not guided by attachment theory.

Some investigators (e.g., Stevenson-Hinde, personal communication, July 1987) prefer to use the term parent–child bond or caregiving relationship rather than parent–child attachment. These researchers contend that attachment as defined by Bowlby (1969) refers to a relationship in which the attachment figure is stronger and wiser than the attached person. Under this definition, a child can be attached to a parent, but the converse cannot obtain. However, we believe that a strong case can be made for using the term attachment in both senses. True, the provision of protection and security is complementary (not equal) to the seeking of protection and security, but there are striking emotional parallels. It is not only the infant who keeps tabs on the parent, and who becomes distressed upon separation; parents also keep a watchful eye on their infant, become alarmed when the infant’s whereabouts are not known or the infant’s well-being is endangered, and feel relieved when the infant is found or the danger past. These feelings are so compelling that the label caregiving relationship (suggested by Bowlby) seems somehow too pale. As one father remarked to us as he rescued his 2-year-old from the vicinity of a swimming pool: “Before we had a child, I didn’t know what fear was.” A statement by a mother belonging to the !Kung hunter-gatherer society of the Kalahari desert (Shostak, 1981) attests to the universality of such feelings:

When I sit in the village and my children are playing around me, I don’t worry. I just watch what they do. When I leave them behind and go gathering, I worry that they won’t be well taken care of, especially if the only person in the village is there because she isn’t well. (p. 106)

Although the parental side of attachment was not the primary focus of his interest, Bowlby did not neglect this topic altogether. In a brief section in his 1969 volume, he considers it in the context of discussing maternal retrieving behavior in mammals:

Whilst maternal retrieving behavior is to be seen in its most elementary forms in non-human species, it is evident also in human mothers. In primitive societies a mother is likely to remain very near her infant, and almost always within eyeshot or earshot of him. The mother’s alarm or the infant’s distress will at once elicit action. In more developed communities the scene becomes more complex, partly because not infrequently a mother appoints someone to deputize for her for a shorter or longer part of the day. Even so, most mothers experience a strong pull to be close to their babies and young children. Whether they submit to the pull, or stand out against it depends on a hundred variables, personal, cultural and economic. (p. 241)

Bowlby further argued that, beyond infancy, the attachment relationship could best be characterized as a goal-corrected partnership between parent and child. In such a partnership, each member is able to see the world from the perspective of the other and to take that perspective into account in the negotiation of joint goals. This idea is supported by recent evidence that even toddlers have some rudimentary role-taking ability (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982). By 4 years of age the ability to negotiate plans regarding maternal departures is sufficiently well developed to have a significant influence on child behavior (Marvin & Greenberg, 1982). However, the parents’ equally important contribution to the goal-corrected partnership has not yet been examined, although it is clear that individual differences in parental perspective taking must play a crucial role in the developing relationship.

In the study reported in this chapter we begin to explore the parental side of attachment through interviews in which we asked mothers to discuss their thoughts and feelings about their attachment relationship with a specific child. The theoretical basis for our investigation was Bowlby’s account of the internationalization of attachment relations in infancy (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980).

PARENTAL ATTACHMENT AND THE CONCEPT OF “INTERNAL WORKING MODELS”

In discussing the infant’s experience and representation of attachment relations, Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) proposed the concept of “internal working model.” Internal working models of the environment and of the significant people in it are dynamic representations constructed through transactions with the world (for reviews and further development of these ideas see Bretherton, 1985, 1987, 1990).

An especially important component of an individual’s working model of the world are working models of the attachment figure and the self. To quote Bowlby (1969):

Starting, we may suppose, toward the end of the first year, and probably especially actively during his second and third year when he acquires the powerful and extraordinary gift of language, a child is busy constructing working models of how his mother and other significant persons may be expected to behave, how he himself may be expected to behave, and of how each interacts with all the others. Within the framework of these working models he evaluates his situation and makes his plans. And within the framework of the working models of his mother and himself he evaluates special aspects of his situation and makes his attachment plans. (p. 354)

According to Bowlby (1973, 1980), internal working models provide the basic framework for experiencing, interpreting and anticipating events in the world, including attachment-related events. For this reason, the healthy functioning of attachment relationships is crucially dependent on how valid and accessible to conscious awareness (vs. distorted and inaccessible) a child’s internal models of self and attachment figure are (Bowlby, 1969). It is equally important that the child’s developing working models of self and attachment figure(s) mesh well with the parents’ internal working models of self and child (Bretherton, 1987, in press). Yet so far, parents’ internal working models of self as attachment figure in relation to a specific child have been assessed only indirectly, that is in relation to the parents’ family of origin.

In a seminal study, Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) discovered that the quality of children’s attachment to parents, as observed at 1 and 6 years of age, is impressively correlated with specific patterns of parental responses to a semistructured interview, the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview (Main & Goldwyn, in press). This interview consists of a series of open-ended questions regarding parental recollections of childhood attachment figures, and the influence of these early attachment on the parents’ own development and relationships. To analyze the interview, Main and Goldwyn (in press; see also Main et al., 1985) eschewed the more usual procedure of analyzing separate responses to each question. Instead, they carefully read and reread each interview transcript, and then evaluated the text as a whole. Their analysis revealed three major patterns of responding. First, parents of 6-year-olds classified as secure with them in infancy valued both attachment and autonomy, and seemed at ease when discussing the influence of attachment-related issues on their own development (whether or not they recalled a secure childhood). Second, parents of children who were classified as insecure-avoidant with them in infancy, dismissed and devalued attachment. They appeared to believe that early attachment experiences had little effect on their own development, and frequently claimed not to remember any incidents from childhood. Specific memories that emerged despite this denial were likely not to support the generalized (often highly idealized) descriptions of their parents. Third, parents of children previously classified as insecure-resistant seemed preoccupied with their early attachments. They recalled many specific, often conflict-ridden incidents about childhood attachments without being able to weave them into a consistent overall picture. In summary, both the dismissing and preoccupied parents found it difficult to discuss attachment relationships in an integrated way. Recently, a fourth major classification of infant–attachment (insecure-disorganized) has been identified by Main and Solomon (1990). Data from the Adult Attachment Interview showed that parents of such infants seemed to be struggling with unresolved issues concerning the loss of an attachment figure in childhood (see Main & Solomon, 1990). These results have been replicated in two other samples (Eichberg, 1987; Grossmann, Fremmer-Bombik, Rudolph, & Grossmann, in press).

On the basis of Main’s (1985) findings with the Adult Attachment Interview, we reasoned that an interview focused on parents’ attachment experiences with their own child should furnish us with material suitable for an analogous qualitative analysis. We also expected that findings from such an analysis would, like those of Main et al. (1985), be systematically related to observational measures of attachment. Consequently, we designed an in-depth, structured but open-ended Parent Attachment Interview, in which we inquired about the relationship from an attachment-theoretical perspective. Although the primary intent was to examine the interview text in relation to individual differences in attachment quality, we decided to begin with a content analysis in order to gain some insight into the attachment-related issues that concern mothers of 2-year-olds. The subsequent qualitative analysis of individual differences among mothers relied on a scale of maternal sensitivity/insight developed by Biringen and Bretherton (elaborating on Biringen, 1988) which was applied to the transcribed interview texts as a whole. The theoretical basis of this scale derived from two sources: Findings showing (a) that a mother’s ability to respond promptly and appropriately to her infant’s signals is associated with the development of a secure infant–mother relationship (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and (b) that mothers of secure infants are able to discuss attachment issues with emotional openness and reflectiveness (Main et al., 1985). For validation purposes sensitivity/insight scores were compared with prior, concurrent, and later measures of attachment and with a variety of other attachment-relevant socioemotional variables.

METHOD

Sample

Participating in this research were 37 lower to upper middle-class families. Maternal education ranged from 12 to 22 years (M = 14.6 years). Most mothers were in their late 20s or early 30s (M = 29.3 years, range 20 to 36 years). The families were recruited into the study when the children were 18 months old. Names were obtained through birth announcements in the local newspaper. A letter of invitation describing the study was sent to the family, and was followed by a telephone call. Of those contacted, 80% agreed to participate.

Mothers and children (20 girls, 17 boys) were asked to take part in a two-phase longitudinal study of mastery motivation and its relation to attachment security at 18 and 25 months (Maslin, Bretherton, & Morgan, 1987). The project was later extended to include affect communication and the child’s representation of attachment at 37 months (Bretherton et al., 1990). Twenty-nine families participated in this third phase of the study.

Procedure

A large body of data was collected when the children were 18, 25, and 37 months old. The centerpiece of this chapter is the parent attachment interview given to the mothers when the children were 25 months old, but other attachment-related measures were also obtained. At 18 months, the Ainsworth Strange Situation was administered during one of two laboratory sessions. At 25 months, the mothers performed the Waters and Deane Attachment Q-sort after the interview session; at 37 months they performed the same Q-sort at home. In preparation for the final sorts, the mothers were asked to do a preliminary sort in the lab and were given a list of the Q-...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I Attachment
• Part IV Social Structure and the Family
• Author Index
• Subject Index