Early relationships and resilient outcomes among children of the working poor

Abstract

According to evolutionary and modem psychoanalytic theory, children are biologically disposed to form intimate (attachment) relationships, and development takes place in the context of these relationships. Across studies in a variety of environmental settings, insecure attachment raises the relative risk for the development of abnormally aggressive patterns of behavior, and secure attachment protects impoverished children at risk from deviant outcome in the hostile-aggressive domain. Furthermore, insecure attachment relationships between children and their parents can be prevented by specific interventions in infancy. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) reliably measures parents' mental representations of their own attachment-relevant experiences and accurately predicts whether or not a parent's attachment relationship with his or her child will be secure. It can be administered prenatally. This study is the first to compare behavioral profiles of impoverished children of single working parents with their parents' classifications on the AAI. To date, nine preschoolers and their families have been enrolled in the study (by the May 17 meeting, we anticipate n 25). All children scoring in the clinical range for externalizing behavior on the Child Behavior Checklist (n = 5) had parents classified as insecure on the AAI; all normal children had parents classified as secure on the AAI (p < 0.01 ). Videotaped observations of parents and their children in free-play sessions support the AAI classifications. The AAI may predict deviant and resilient outcomes among children whose single parents are their only resource for attachment relationships.