Influence of Early Attachment on Later Relationships

• Define 'childhood relationships'

  Affiliations with other people in childhood, including friends and classmates, and with adults such as teachers.
• Define 'adult relationships'

  Those relationships the child goes on to have later in life as an adult. These include friendships and working relationships, but most critically, romantic and parental relationships.
• Internal working model

  - The internal working model acts as a template for future childhood and adult relationships.

  - The quality of a baby's first attachment is crucial because this template will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships.

  - A baby whose first relationship is either a reliable attachment figure will tend to assume that this is how relationships are meant to be. Therefore, they will seek functional relationships and behave functionally within them.

  - A child with bad experiences from their first attachment will bring these bad experiences in later relationships. This could mean that they struggle to form relationships at all, or they may not behave appropriately within relationships, displaying insecure-avoidant or insecure-resistant behaviour towards friends and partners.
• Relationships in childhood

  - Attachment type is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood.

  - Kerns (1994) found that securely attached babies go on to form the best quality childhood friendships, but insecurely attached babies later have friendship difficulties.

  - Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998) found that bullying behaviour can be predicted by attachment type. They assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from London.

  - Secure children were unlikely to be involved with bullying at all, insecure-avoidant were most likely to be the victim while insecure-resistant children were most likely to be the bullies.
• Relationships in adulthood - Romantic relationships


  - Hazan and Shaver (1987) analysed 620 replies to a love quiz printed in an American local newspaper and comprised of 3 sections. The first assessed respondents' current or most important relationships. The second assessed general love experiences such as the number of partners. The third section assessed attachment type by asking respondents to choose which of the three statements best describes their feelings.

  - 56% of the respondents were identified as securely attached, 25% were insecure-avoidant and 19% were insecure-resistant. Those with secure attachments were the most likely to have good and longer-lasting romantic experiences. The avoidant responses tended to reveal jealousy and a fear of intimacy.

  - Overall, their findings suggest that patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic relationships.

  
  

  - McCarthy (1999) studied 40 adult women who had been assessed when they were babies to establish their early attachment type.

  - Those assessed as securely attached had the best adult friendships and romantic relationships. Adults classed as insecure-resistant as babies had problems maintaining friendships while those classified as insecure-avoidant as babies struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships.
• Relationships in adulthood: Parental relationships

  - Internal working models also affect someone's ability to parent their own children. People tend to base their parenting style on their internal working model so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family.

  - Bailey et al. (2007) considered the attachments of 99 mothers to their babies and to their own mothers.

  - Mother-baby attachment was assessed using the SS and mother-mother attachment was assessed using an adult attachment interview.

  - The majority of women had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mothers.
• Evaluating early attachment's influence on later relationships: Research support (with counterpoint)


  - A strength of research into attachment and later relationships is that there is supporting evidence.

  - Reviews of studies linking attachment and later development such as Fearon and Roisman (2017) have concluded that early attachment consistently predicts later attachment, emotional well-being and attachment to own children.

  - The strength of the relationship between early attachment type and later development depends on the attachment type and the aspect of later development. So whilst insecure-avoidant attachment seemsto convey fairly mild disadvantages for any aspect of development, disorganised attachment is strongly associated with later mental disorder.

  - This means that secure attachment as a baby appears to convey advantages for future development, while disorganised attachment seems to seriously disadvantage children.

  
  

  - Counterpoint: Not all evidence supports the strong links between early attachment and later development.

  - For example, Becker-Stoll et al. (2008), or the Regensburg longitudinal study, followed 43 individuals from the age of 1.

  - At 16 years, attachment was assessed using the adult attachment interview, and there was no evidence of continuity.

  - This means that it isn't clear to what extent the quality attachment really predicts later development; there may be other important factors.
• Evaluating early attachment's influence on later relationships: Validity issues with retrospective studies


  - A limitation of most research linking early attachment and later development is that attachment is assessed retrospectively.

  - Most research into this section of attachment research isn't longitudinal, rather, researchers will ask adolescents or adult participants questions about their parental relationships, and identify their attachment type from this.

  - This creates 2 validity problems: asking questions relies on honesty from the participants and accurate perception of the participants. It also means that it is hard to know whether early attachment is being assessed, or if adult attachment is.

  - This means that measures of early attachment used in many studies may be confounded with other factors, rendering them meaningless.
• Evaluating early attachment's influence on later relationships: Confounding variables

  - Another limitation is the existence of confounding variables.

  - Some studies do assess attachment in infancy such as McCarthy (1999), meaning that the assessment of early attachment is still valid.

  - However, these studies may still have validity problems, as associations between attachment quality and later development can be confounded. E.g. parenting style may influence both attachment type and later development.

  - This means that we can never be entirely sure that it is early attachment and not some other factor that is influencing later development.
• Evaluating early attachment's influence on later relationships: Balancing opportunity and risk


  - Clarke and Clarke (1998) suggested that it seems likely that the influence of early attachment is probabilistic.

  - This means that an insecure attachment doesn't invariably cause increased risk of later developmental problems, e.g. no one is going to inevitably have unsuccessful romantic relationships as a result of their early attachment experiences. It could be that there are many other factors involved.

  - By knowing someone's attachment status we have an opportunity to intervene and help their development. However, we may also become too pessimistic and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.