Family cumulative risk and at-risk kindergarteners’ social competence: the mediating role of parent representations of the attachment relationship

ABSTRACT

Secure attachment relationships have been linked to social competence in at-risk children. In the current study, we examined the role of parent secure base scripts in predicting at-risk kindergarteners’ social competence. Parent representations of secure attachment were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between lower family cumulative risk and children’s social competence. Participants included 106 kindergarteners and their primary caregivers recruited from three urban charter schools serving low-income families as a part of a longitudinal study. Lower levels of cumulative risk predicted greater secure attachment representations in parents, and scores on the secure base script assessment predicted children’s social competence. An indirect relationship between lower cumulative risk and kindergarteners’ social competence via parent secure base script scores was also supported. Parent script-based representations of the attachment relationship appear to be an important link between lower levels of cumulative risk and low-income kindergarteners’ social competence. Implications of these findings for future interventions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Attachment
• cumulative risk
• secure base scripts
• social competence
• kindergarten

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the students, parents, and schools that participated in this research. The authors also wish to thank the research assistants of the Family Emotion Lab and the School of Social Work at Wayne State University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.