About this session

Saturday, 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

The Dynamic and Interconnected Nature of Attachment Processes within Family Systems

According to attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982), children develop mental representations of close relationships based on their early experiences with caregivers, which play an important role in their socioemotional development. Research suggests that children continue to revise and update their attachment representations as they grow older and accumulate new relationship experiences throughout adolescence and adulthood (Simpson et al., 2015). From a family systems perspective (Bowen, 1978), the attachment-related changes that individual family members experience over time are intertwined—they may influence, or be influenced by, other members’ attachments and socioemotional functioning. This symposium brings together new research that highlights the interconnected and dynamic nature of how attachment processes unfold within families, leveraging dyadic and triadic data from mothers, fathers, and children, studied from pregnancy to late adolescence.

Paper 1 considers how first-time parents mutually influence each other’s psychological adjustment during the transition to parenthood, examining actor and partner effects of mothers’ and fathers’ attachment orientations during pregnancy on their postpartum depression and stress. Paper 2 explores the roles of mothers’ and fathers’ attachment representations in how they regulate each other’s responses to their infants’ distress, presenting real-time data on parents’ physiological, observed, and self-reported reactions. Paper 3 examines the longitudinal associations between mothers’ attachment representations and changes in their children’s socioemotional functioning across early childhood. Lastly, Paper 4 examines patterns of coordinated changes among mothers’, fathers’, and children’s attachment styles as children navigate adolescence (age 14 to 18), considering both correlated long-term growth trajectories and synchronized, short-term fluctuations in attachment security.

Paper #1
Title	Attachment Orientation and Parental Adjustment during the Transition to Parenthood: An Actor-Partner Independence Model (APIM)
Presenting author	Yufei Gu, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Paper #2
Title	The Role of Partner Presence on Parents’ Responding to Infant Distress: Moderation by Parental Attachment
Presenting author	Cory R. Platts, University of Missouri, United States

Paper #3
Title	Maternal Secure Base Script Knowledge Predicts Changes in Children’s Dysregulation During Early Childhood
Presenting author	Lee Raby, University of Utah, United States

Paper #4
Title	Coordination of Parent and Adolescent Attachment Across Time
Presenting author	Keely A. Dugan, University of Missouri, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Keely A. Dugan, University of Missouri, United States

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