ATTACHMENT STATES OF MIND AND EARLY INTERVENTION AS PREDICTORS OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD PARENTING OUTCOMES
Date
2023-05
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The current study aimed to explore how a parent may reflect on their
attachment experiences (their attachment state of mind) and participation in an early
parenting intervention, which affects parenting behaviors with their eight-year-old
children. The Adult Attachment Interview was used to classify attachment state of
mind for 74 parents. Parents were then randomized to receive an attachment-based or
a developmental education intervention when their children were infants. During a
middle childhood follow-up visit, parents completed the Attachment Script
Assessment to measure their secure base script knowledge, and parent-child dyads
completed a conflict discussion task to measure parental sensitivity. Consistent with
Zajac et al. (2019) but with a different task, parents with autonomous states of mind
displayed more sensitive caregiving when their children were eight years old than
those with non-autonomous states of mind. These findings add to the robust literature
supporting more positive outcomes for parents and their children later in life when
parents have consistent and coherent representations of their attachment-related
memories and participate in an attachment-based intervention.