Abstract
This study focuses on the concordance of attachment representations in twoparent, two-child families as an original contribution to the current attachment literature. It uses both categorical attachment patterns and continuous scores. Data was collected on 92 native French-speaking Belgian families. In order to disentangle conceptual and methodological interpretations, each hypothesis was tested in two complementary ways: first in a sample where the parent completed the Cartes pour les Modeles Internes de Relation (CaMir) and their young children (four- to seven-year-olds) the French version of the Attachment Story Completion Task (Fr-ASCT) and second, in a sample where both parents and their teenage to young-adult children (15- to 34-year-olds) completed the CaMir. Our results indicated very little if any concordance of attachment representations, either when using categorical scores or when using continuous scores. The implications of these results for both theoretical and research purposes are discussed.
Highlights
The studies reviewed at the beginning of this article led us to explore the concordance of secure/insecure attachment representations between mothers and fathers and two of their children as well as the concordance of attachment representations between siblings
Different instruments were used for young children (Fr-Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), coded with the CCH) and for the older children and parents (CaMir)
Our results showed very little concordance of attachment representations between parents and children
Summary
In a meta-analysis, van Ijzendoorn (1995) highlighted quite a strong relation between parents’ attachment representations, as assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (Main & Goldwyn, 1985/1994), and children’s attachment behaviours, as displayed in the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) This strong relation was reinforced by the fact that there were no significant differences in the effect sizes reported in this meta-analysis between studies employing retrospective, concurrent and prospective designs To the best of our knowledge, no study has considered attachment transmission between parents and two of their children. Some researchers have looked at the similarities of attachment patterns in mono- and dizygotic twin pairs (e.g. O’Connor & Croft, 2001)
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