Patterns of Attachment in Frequently and Infrequently Reading Mother—Child Dyads

ABSTRACT

This study explored the relationship between the quality of the mother–child attachment and how often mothers read to their children. Eighteen children who were read to infrequently were matched to a group of children who were read to daily, for sex, age, and socioeconomic status. The children's mothers read them a booklet, mother and child were observed in a reunion episode, the children completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn, 1965) and Frostig's (1966) test for spatial orientation, and the mothers were given the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984). The mothers in the frequently reading dyads did not need to discipline their child to focus on the reading task as often as the mothers in the infrequently reading dyads did. Mothers whose attachment to their child was less secure spent less time reading to their child and had more troublesome episodes during the reading session than mothers whose attachment to their child was more secure. The security of the mother-child attachment was related to the mothers' representation of their relationship with their parents, and mothers who had a secure relationship with their child read more frequently to their child than did mothers who had an insecure relationship with their child.