Perceptions of secure base provision within the family

Abstract

The present study examined three sets of questions about secure base provision in the context of the family, including (1) relations between inter-parental perceptions of secure base provision and parents' adult romantic attachment and marital satisfaction, (2) interrelations among family members' perception of secure base provision, and (3) links between both adolescents' and parents' perceptions of secure base provision and adolescent symptoms. Participants were 189 adolescents from two-parent families (mean age = 17 years; 118 girls) and their parents. We found partial support for theorized links between perceptions of spousal secure base provision and spousal romantic attachment, as well as full support for expected associations between secure base provision and marital satisfaction. Family members' perceptions of secure base provision were linked in theoretically expected ways: mothers' perceptions of her spouse as a secure base were positively related to their adolescents' perceptions of the mother as a secure base and the father as a secure base. Further, adolescents tended to agree with mothers about perceptions of the husband/father and with fathers about the wife/mother as a secure base. Finally, adolescents' perceptions of parents as a secure base were associated with lower adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Inter-parental perceptions of secure base provision were not linked to adolescent symptoms.

Keywords:

• attachment
• secure base
• adolescent
• family
• marital satisfaction
• symptoms

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Grant HD36635 from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to Jude Cassidy. Portions of this research were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, 2007. We thank the families who participated in this research. We also thank Laurie Alexander, Steven Bottjer, Wendy Boyer, Melanie Demastus, Mariana Falconier, Jodi Jacobson, Lisa Kiang, Elizabeth Mizerek, Kimberly Odam, Jeremy Rachlin, Jessica Smith, Stephanie Warner, and Jon-Andrew Whiteman for their assistance with data collection, and Mindy Rodenberg Cabrera for supervising data collection.

Notes

1. Details of analyses incorporating gender and all two-way interactions involving gender are available from the first author.