Attachment through the lifespan
I am going to present four longitudinal studies of attachment with research addressing parental experience before becoming parents, attachment history and friendships, parent-adolescent relationships and successful peer and romantic relationships, and insecure attachment and personality pathology. Each study is nuanced and complex but well worth examining.
Hancox, Olsson, et. al (2022) published “Parental History of Positive Development and Child Behavior in Next Generation Offspring: A two-cohort prospective intergenerational study” in Child Development. It is longitudinal using two samples: (1) they looked at young adults (before they had children) and studied positive development through social competence, life satisfaction, civic action and engagement, trust and tolerance, and trust in authorities and institutions; and 2) they looked at positive development in adolescents including strengths, life satisfaction, participation in clubs and groups, and quality of social attachments before they had children. Here’s part of the abstract and article:
Using rare intergenerational data from two large-scale prospective Australasian studies, findings indicated that healthier socioemotional development during adolescence and young adulthood predicted more positive and less negative offspring development during early childhood. Effect sizes in the two cohorts, while small to moderate, are of notable public health interest given that parent assessments occurred up to 25 years prior to child assessment and that the origins of child behavior are multifactorial. Also important to appreciate, and in contrast to many intergenerational studies based disproportionately on high-risk populations, is that the current study's results pertain to a more general population sample..
Given the longstanding focus on the early years, results of this report call attention to the preconception period, suggesting that positive development during adolescence and young adulthood may also influence offspring psychosocial development in early childhood. Furthermore, our findings suggest that any comprehensive monitoring or intervention strategy would benefit from adopting a multidimensional approach to measurement and promotion of positive development pathways.
The promotion of positive development requires the attention of multiple sectors, including education, health, social services, and community organizations, especially during young adulthood when post-secondary education is not attended by all and when programs promoting young adult life skills are rare. There are many socio-cultural climates that could influence positive development trajectories including those defined by the local community within which children and young people live (e.g., socioeconomic advantage vs disadvantage), state and federal socio-political contexts (e.g., inclusive vs discriminatory policies) and the macro-level global influences (e.g., wars and pandemics). Each of these domains of influence warrants further study. Taking a holistic full-cycle life course perspective, interventions and policies targeting positive development have the potential to yield a triple dividend – improving social and emotional health for young people not only at the time of intervention but also as future adults and for their children.
Vieth, Englund, & Simpson (2022) published “Developmental Antecedents of Friendship Satisfaction in Adulthood” in Developmental Psychology. Here’s their edited abstract:
Cross-sectional studies have shown that greater friendship satisfaction in adulthood is associated with many positive outcomes. However, the developmental antecedents of satisfaction with close friends in adulthood have not been examined using prospective data. We do not know, for example, whether certain key experiences early in life, such as infant attachment security versus insecurity or the quality of maternal sensitivity, prospectively predict the degree of satisfaction with close friends in adulthood. We also do not know whether other salient experiences, such as the degree of peer competence in childhood or friendship security in adolescence, mediate relations between early life attachment and/or maternal sensitivity and adult friendship satisfaction. Leveraging data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaption, we examined four developmental models containing these theoretically relevant antecedents of friendship satisfaction at age 32. The sample was approximately evenly split by gender (female = 82, male = 76), with the following ethnic distribution: White = 67.1%, Black = 8.9%, mixed race = 18.4%, other = 5.6%. All participants were born to mothers living below the poverty line at birth but on average were lower middle class by age 32. We found that the model containing direct paths from infant attachment security versus insecurity and from the quality of maternal sensitivity to friendship satisfaction at age 32 provided the best fit, suggesting that early parent–child relationships provide a foundation for later adult relationships with close friends.
Schultz et al. (2022) published “The Future is Present in the Past: A meta-analysis on the longitudinal associations of parent-adolescent relationships with peer and romantic relationships” in Child Development. Here are edited parts of the abstract and article: Positive peer and romantic relationships are crucial for adolescents' positive adjustment and relationships with parents lay the foundation for these relationships. This longitudinal meta-analysis examined how parent-adolescent relationships continue into later peer and romantic relationships. Included longitudinal studies (k = 54 involving peer relationships, k = 38 involving romantic relationships) contained demographically diverse samples from predominantly Western cultural contexts.
Achieving autonomy, gaining more egalitarian relationships with parents, as well as forming and maintaining high-quality relationships with peers and romantic partners are among the most salient developmental tasks during this period. As adolescents navigate through changing social demands, their social relationships undergo major modifications and maturation. The role of the parent-adolescent relationship in shaping adolescents' peer and romantic relationships is thus also important for their general functioning. As peer and romantic relationships resemble parent–adolescent relationships in their characteristics and functions, parent-adolescent relationships are suggested to provide a direct foundation for these developing social relationships. Relationships may also affect adolescents' general emotional states through which interaction patterns can carry over from one relational system to another, resulting in bidirectional associations between parent–adolescent and peer or romantic relationships.
More supportive parent-adolescent relationships were associated with more supportive and less negative peer and romantic relationships. Similarly, more negative parent-adolescent relationships were associated with more negative and less supportive peer and romantic relationships. The results for both peer and romantic relationships indicate that core dimensions of parent-adolescent relationships continue into other social relationships later in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Even more so, particularly supportive parent-adolescent relationships might provide a foundation for later peer relationships as suggested by dominant theoretical perspectives (e.g., attachment). Relationships with parents during adolescence continue to be associated with later relationships in adolescence and emerging adulthood, and these associations do not seem to become weaker compared to childhood. However, the small effect sizes also suggest that relationship quality with parents does not solely predict later relationship quality with peers and romantic partners.
The results of this meta-analysis emphasize the importance of positive parent-adolescent relationships for the development of positive peer and romantic relationships in and beyond adolescence. Both supportive and negative parent-adolescent relationships seem to equally predict subsequent peer and romantic relationships. Assisting adolescents and parents in maintaining a mutually supportive relationship may help adolescents to develop positive social relationships that are crucial for their overall well-being.
Finally, Smith & South (2022) published “Insecure Attachment and Personality Pathology: Concurrent assessment and longitudinal modeling” in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment. Here’s the edited abstract:
Insecure attachment and personality pathology are parallel frameworks for representing interpersonal dysfunction. Although research to date has revealed strong bivariate associations between these constructs, the current state of the science is nonspecific and leaves piecemeal guidance for clinical and empirical efforts. The goal of the present study was to determine the magnitude of the associations between attachment and personality pathology across two conceptualizations of maladaptivity and across three waves of time, thereby satisfying repeated calls for empirical innovation in this area. A sample of newlywed heterosexual couples (N = 202 individuals) completed longitudinal assessments of personality pathology and romantic attachment insecurity. Results suggested that the covariation of attachment and personality pathology may be marred by measurement problems related to distress saturation in attachment and personality disorder instruments. Latent curve modeling further suggested that attachment insecurity and personality disorders fluctuate concurrently within persons. Future research should work toward validating unity models of attachment and personality pathology, correcting key measures, and documenting specific mechanisms of association between these constructs.
Each of these studies is important and this last one is especially helpful in acknowledging measurement problems and the reality that attachment status can fluctuate..