Family risk and early attachment development: The differential role of parental sensitivity

Abstract

Family risks are known to be detrimental to children's attachment development. This study investigated whether parental sensitivity plays different roles in early attachment development in the context of risk: Sensitivity was hypothesized to mediate risk effects on attachment, as well as a moderator that shapes the relation between risk and attachment. Multiple family risks, parental sensitivity (defined as responsivity and supportive presence), and children's attachment security of 197 infants and toddlers (Mage = 15.25 months) and their caregivers were assessed in a prospective study with a cohort‐sequential‐design in Germany. Caregivers' sensitivity served as a mediator of risk effects on attachment as well as a moderator that buffers adverse consequences of risk. Early sensitivity might be relevant in setting the stage for attachment development supporting resilience.

Effects of family risk on early attachment security: Gender-specific susceptibility and mediation by parenting behavior

“…Table 1 shows descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients between attachment security and the dimensional family risk indices, the total score, as well as the scores for proximal and distal risks. The total risk index was negatively associated with children’s attachment security (see Gerlach et al, In press). Whereas girls’ attachment security showed a negative association to distal risk factors only, attachment insecurity of boys was exclusively related to proximal risk factors.…”

“…Previous analyses showed that differences in attachment security due to family risk effects were strong at the first wave of measurement (Gerlach et al, In press). Therefore, we wanted to further explore these effects in more detail and exclusively focused on the first wave in this paper.…”

“…Data collection was performed using semi-structured home visits, each lasting about 3 h (for more details, see Gerlach et al, In press). Children and their primary caregivers were observed in dyadic free play and structured play situations (Fößel, 2019), and a situation for observing children’s autonomy behavior and emotion regulation competencies.…”

“…Eickhorst et al, 2015). The KiD: 0–3 includes items from other standardized and validated questionnaires, official national guidelines and socio-demographic items adapted from previous research to assess and define individual family risk factors (Eickhorst et al, 2015; Gerlach et al, In press). In total, 21 family risk factors from the child’s perspective occurring in the pre-assessment sample were assessed: These were 11 distal risk factors (poverty, crowding, unemployment, single parent, migration, low education, primary caregiver’s experience of maltreatment and/ or neglect in childhood, early motherhood, more than two siblings, lifetime psychiatric disorder, and lifetime substance abuse), and 10 proximal risk factors (parental quarrel, disagreement between parents, inter-parental violence, current depression, negative regard during pregnancy, negative attitude in nurturing, risk for child maltreatment and/or neglect, current stress, child’s poor health condition, and child’s challenging temperament).…”

“…In this paper, we focused on the first subscale responsivity and supportive presence because our previously reported results showed that parental responsivity and supportive presence was the best predictor of children’s attachment security (Gerlach et al, In press).…”