Finnish mother's and father's attachment representations during child's first year predict psychosocial adjustment in preadolescence

Abstract

The aim of the longitudinal study was to examine, for the first time in a Nordic country, whether autonomous parenting in infancy affects psychosocial adjustment in preadolescence. Attachment representations of mothers and fathers were investigated with the Adult Attachment Interview in a community sample of two-parent Finnish families. Most mothers and fathers were classified as autonomous, a finding which is in line with normative Western distributions. Moreover, the ratio of dismissing versus preoccupied adults was similar to Western norms. Demographic characteristics such as family structure and years of education differentiated autonomous from non-autonomous mothers. In preadolescence, the children who had experienced at least one autonomous parent were more empathic and had fewer problems in social relationships and thought processes compared to children of two non-autonomous parents. The findings suggest that autonomous parenting has long-term parent gender specific influences on children's psychosocial adjustment.

Keywords:

• Adult Attachment Interview
• mothers
• fathers
• preadolescents
• psychosocial competence and problems
• Finnish families
• normative data

Acknowledgements

Anna Kouvo holds a postgraduate position in the national Graduate School of Psychology funded by the Ministry of Education. The manuscript was prepared during Maarit Silvén's stay as a Professor (acting) at University of Turku, from 2007 through 2010. Both authors have equally contributed to the manuscript. The study was also supported by grants from the Family Federation of Finland (Suomen Kotien Kukkasrahasto Foundation), NordForsk, Oskar Öflund Foundation, and the Turku University Foundation. Portions of the data were presented at the International Attachment Conference, October 2009, in Barcelona. We thank Susanna Greus (former Nauha) and Susanna Hilli for assistance in interviewing the parents, Maria Blomqvist, Antti Hikipää, Heidi Ikäheimonen, Tiina Minkkinen, Susanna Reponen, and Anna Vartiala for transcribing the interviews, Emilia Suviala for reliability coding of the AAI transcripts, and Jenny Halin and Emilia Silvén for coding the MASCS and YSR. We are grateful to Matti Grönroos for his valuable methodological and statistical advice and to Jacqueline Välimäki for her expert revision of the English language. Special thanks are due to the families that participated in the study.

Notes

1. The compulsory schooling includes elementary school (grade one–six) and junior high school (grade seven–nine). Post-compulsory education includes upper secondary schools (three years) and vocational schools (two–three years). Higher education includes polytechnics and universities (BA three–four years; MA five–six years). For more detailed information about the Finnish education system, see Ministry of Education (2005), Ministry of Education and Culture (2010).

2. When calculating Cronbach's alpha, seven of the 15 items of the rule-breaking behavior scale were excluded, because of no variation in items such as “I use tobacco”, “I use drugs”, “I set fires”. It is not surprising that all children in our non-clinical community sample scored zero (disagree) on items representing extremely deviant behavior for 11-year-olds.

3. Standardized residual = Residual / √ Expected N. A value ≥1.96 is regarded as significant.