A glance at children's family drawings: Associations with children's and parents’ hope and attributional style

Abstract

The current study examined differences in children's and parents’ hope and negative attributional style as a function of children's attachment categorizations derived from children's family drawings in 77 triads of young elementary school age children ( mean age 6.70, range 6–7.5; SD=53), mothers, and fathers in Israel. In addition, associations between scales in children's family drawings and children's and parents’ hope and negative attributional style were examined. Drawings were coded using Main and Kaplan's (1986) coding system. Both children's and parents’ hopes and attributional style were reflected in the children's drawings. Specifically, the scales reflecting attachment security, such as vitality and pride, were positively correlated with children's hopes and negatively correlated with children's and parents’ negative attributional style. By contrast, the scales reflecting attachment insecurity, such as emotional distance, anger, and pathology, were negatively correlated with participants’ positive attributional style and hope and positively correlated with negative attributional style. Surprisingly, role reversal was positively correlated with mothers’ hope and negatively with fathers’ negative attributional style. Finally, differences in children's hope and negative attributional style, in addition to mothers’ negative attributional style, were found as a function of children's attachment categorizations. The implications for theory and clinical interventions are discussed.