The Freedom to Choose Secure Attachment Relationships in Adulthood

Hitting the bull’s eye: Attachment representations and the organization of social networks

Hazan and Zeifman were the first to explore Bowlby’s proposition that adults would organize their attachment relationships into a hierarchy and since then considerable research has explored both the structure and function of attachment hierarchies using different methodologies. In this study, previous findings establishing an association between attachment and networks were replicated and the associations between network members were explored. First, consistent with expectations, the findings provided additional evidence that romantic partners do not necessarily jump to the top of the hierarchy and young adults continue to place parents, in particular mothers, at the top of their hierarchy. Consistent with previous work, security was associated with placing others closer to the self and attachment avoidance was associated with placing others farther from the self on an electronic bull’s eye. Furthermore, to date, this is the first study to examine the association between attachment representations and the organization of network members. Interestingly, security was associated with placing network members closer to each other and attachment avoidance was associated with placing network members farther from each other. This finding suggests that individuals with high attachment security may be more motivated to allow members of their social networks to mingle whereas individuals with high attachment avoidance scores seemed to be motivated to keep their network members at a distance. The results of this study extend our understanding how attachment representations may influence the organization of our social networks.

Attachment Networks in Committed Couples

This study explored attachment networks in committed couples who differed in parenting choice and relationship status. Attachment networks were defined in terms of attachment functions, attachment strength, the presence of a primary figure, and full-blown attachments. Participants were 198 couples, married or cohabiting, either expecting their first child or childless-by-choice. Results indicated that participants relied most strongly on partners for all attachment functions except secure base, for which they relied on mothers to a similar extent. Furthermore, expectant women reported more proximity seeking and stronger attachments to mothers, while expectant men relied more on fathers for safe haven. Married participants indicated less proximity seeking to partners than cohabiting couples, and married women reported less reliance on partners for safe haven than married men and cohabiting women. This study supports previous findings underlining the particular importance of partners for members of committed couples. Further, it extends past research by showing the robustness of this finding across parenting choice, and by revealing gender differences in the attachment networks of committed couples.

Father attachment, father emotion expression, and children's attachment to fathers: The role of marital conflict

The current study examined relations between father attachment to spouses and child attachment to fathers in middle childhood, focusing on father emotion expressions in father-child interactions as mediators and marital conflict as a moderator of relations. Participants were 199 children between 6 and 12 years of age and their fathers. Fathers completed questionnaires about their attachment to their spouses, and both fathers and mothers reported on their marital conflict. Fathers also discussed a difficult topic with their children for 5 min, and fathers' positive and negative emotion expression during the discussions were coded. Children completed questionnaires through an interview about their attachment to their father. Father insecure attachment interacted with marital conflict in predicting more negative emotions and less positive emotions during father-child interactions. Specifically, in the context of higher marital conflict in this community sample, fathers who reported greater preoccupied attachment to their spouses exhibited more negative emotions and less positive emotions when interacting with their children. In turn, more father negative emotions and less positive emotions were associated with children's less secure attachment to fathers. In contrast, father fearful attachment interacted with marital conflict to predict less negative emotion and more positive emotion during interactions with children. (PsycINFO Database Record

Attachment, Social Support Satisfaction, and Well-Being During Life Transition in Emerging Adulthood

The present study was designed to investigate the relations among attachment, social support satisfaction, and well-being in a cross-sectional sample of emerging adults ( N = 213) experiencing one or more normative life transitions. The sample represented a range of educational and vocational backgrounds. The primary hypotheses were that social support satisfaction would mediate the associations between each attachment dimension and well-being. A corresponding theoretical model was tested using structural equation modeling. The model provided an excellent fit to the sample data. Social support satisfaction mediated the association between attachment anxiety and well-being, but not the association between attachment avoidance and well-being. That is, attachment anxiety was indirectly associated with well-being through social support satisfaction, whereas attachment avoidance was directly associated with well-being. Alternative model testing provided mixed support for the variable ordering in the theoretical model. Implications are provided for future research and for counseling emerging adult clients experiencing transition.