Journal Article

Taking Stock of Two Decades of Attachment Transmission Gap: Broadening the Assessment of Maternal Behavior

Bernier, Annie, Matte-Gagné, Célia, Whipple, Natasha, Bélanger, Marie-Ève

2014

Overview

This report aimed to investigate the capacity of maternal behaviors tailored to children's attachment and exploration systems to jointly explain the well-known mother–child transmission of attachment. Four home visits were conducted between ages 7 months and 2 years with 130 mother–child dyads to assess maternal attachment state of mind, sensitivity, autonomy support, and mother–child attachment security. Results showed that together, maternal sensitivity and autonomy support fully accounted for the relation between maternal and child attachment, that they each accounted for a unique portion of this relation, and that the magnitude of these mediated pathways was equivalent. These results suggest that the attachment transmission gap can be narrowed by the use of a theory-driven multidimensional approach to maternal behavior.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Wiley for the Society for Research in Child Development,Oxford University Press
• Subject: Adult / Attachment / Attachment behavior / Autonomy / Behavior / Child care / Child development / Child psychology / Children / Developmental psychology / Domiciliary visits / Dyadics / EMPIRICAL ARTICLES / Evaluation / Female / Human behaviour / Humans / Infant / Infants / Male / Maternal behavior / Maternal Behavior - psychology / Middle Aged / Mother-Child Relations - psychology / Mothers / Multidimensional analysis / Multidimensional approach / Object Attachment / Parent child relations / Statistical variance / Young Adult