Abstract
Changes in children's attachment security to mother and father were examined for 230 firstborn children (M = 31.17 months), their mothers and fathers participating in a longitudinal investigation starting in the last trimester of the mothers' pregnancy and 1, 4, 8, and 12 months after the birth of an infant sibling. Both parents completed the Attachment Q-set at prenatal, 4, and 12 months. Growth mixture models revealed four latent classes in which children's attachments were (a) both secure with a modest decline to both parents (68.3%); (b) more secure with father than mother with a steep decline for both (12.6%); (c) both insecure with no change (10%); and (d) more secure with mother than father with a modest increase for both (9.1%). Multi-group latent growth curve analyses revealed that parenting and coparenting differed across families. Children had lower externalizing behavior problems in families with two secure attachments than in families with one secure attachment, either to mother or to father, who, in turn, had fewer problems than children with two insecure attachments. Findings underscore the strengths of a family systems framework to understand attachment relationships with multiple caregivers and the family risks and protective factors that covary with children's behavioral adjustment after the birth of a sibling.
Highlights
The development of a secure parent-child attachment is one of the most significant developmental milestones of early childhood (Ainsworth et al, 1978; Bowlby, 1969)
The birth of an infant sibling may be a challenging time for firstborn children as they adjust to changes in the mother-child relationship and witness their cherished attachment figure interacting with another infant
Identifying classes based on changes in attachment security to mother and father To identify classes of families with similar growth trajectories, fit indices suggested the four-class model solution was the best fitting model, Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) = −1410.752, Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) = −1314.485, LMR-likelihood ratio test (LRT) = .05, over the three-class, AIC = −1400.699, BIC = −1321.623, LMR-LRT = .48, and five-class, AIC = −1417.111, BIC= −1303.654, LMR-LRT = .34, models; the four-class model had higher entropy (.749) than the five class model (.720)
Summary
The development of a secure parent-child attachment is one of the most significant developmental milestones of early childhood (Ainsworth et al, 1978; Bowlby, 1969). Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz (2018) argued persuasively for an integrative framework in understanding how attachment relationships with both mothers and fathers determine children’s behavioral outcomes. They referred to four attachment configurations based on the security and insecurity of children’s attachments in which children’s attachments to parents could be both secure or both insecure, or children could have only one secure attachment to either parent. In line with the attachment network framework, the first goal was to use growth mixture modeling (GMM) to identify different attachment configurations, taking into consideration change in children’s attachment security to both their mothers and fathers. We hypothesized that at least four classes of families would be found in line with the four attachment configurations: (1) securely attached to both mother and father; (2) insecurely attached to both; (3) secure to mother, insecure to father; and (4) secure to father, insecure to mother
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