Secure base representations for both fathers and mothers predict children's secure base behavior in a sample of Portuguese families

Abstract

Relations between fathers’ and mothers’ representations of attachment (independently assessed using an attachment script representation task) and children's secure base behavior (assessed using the Attachment Q-sort; AQS) were studied in 56 Portuguese families (mean age of child = 31.9 months). Each parent's secure base script representation score predicted AQS security scores for the child with that parent at approximately equivalent degrees of association. However, both parental secure base script scores and AQS security scores were positively correlated across parents. A hierarchical regression predicting AQS security with father from both parent's scriptedness scores and from the AQS score with mother showed a unique, significant influence of father's scriptedness score and the AQS score with mother, but mother's scriptedness score did not uniquely add to the prediction. Difficult temperament was ruled out as a mediator of the cross-parent association for AQS security scores.

Keywords:

• attachment
• secure base script representation
• Attachment Q-sort
• fathers
• mothers

Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by FCT Grant PTDC/PSI/64149/2006 and by NSF Grants BCS 99-05926, BCS 01-26163, and BCS 06-23019. The authors would like to thank all the parents and children who participated in this study. The authors would also like to thank all the members of line 1, UIPCDE, for their help in data collection and insightful comments.