Attachment Styles and Parental Divorce

Abstract

Hazan and Shaver (1987) reported that adult attachment styles do not seem to be influenced by parental divorce, which is puzzling because parents with insecure attachment styles should frequently cause their children to have insecure styles (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985; Ricks, 1985), and such parents should also be more likely to divorce. The parents' attachment-related caregiving behavior as well as the model they provide of poor marital communication should influence their child's attachment orientation and eventual experiences in romantic relationships. The present study pursued this matter in greater detail, assessing college students' attachment styles, their relationship status (being in a relationship or not) and satisfaction, parents' marital quality as judged by the subjects (if the marriage lasted), and parental remarriage status (if the marriage did not last). Adult attachment style was related to subjects' own relationship status and relationship quality, and also to parents' marital quality and remarriage status. As in Hazan and Shaver's (1987) study, however, parental divorce per se was not related to offspring's attachment styles or relationship outcomes. Evidently, this is because some intact marriages are distressed and have insecurity-producing effects on children's attachment styles, whereas various post-divorce arrangements differ in the degree to which they promote security or insecurity in offspring.