Randomized preventive intervention for families: Adolescents’ emotional insecurity and attachment to fathers.

Abstract

The family communication project was a randomized preventive intervention designed to support families by improving interparental conflict behavior and the parent-child relationship, with the ultimate goal of decreasing emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship. Evidence for programs that may benefit father-adolescent attachment and adolescents' emotional insecurity in the marital context is a gap in the literature. According to the fathering vulnerability hypothesis, father-child attachment security might be expected to especially benefit from improvements in interparental conflict behavior. The present study evaluated whether there were any indirect effects of this intervention on emotional insecurity via attachment with each parent, with a particular interest in the role of father-child attachment. Cross-lagged panel models revealed that the parent-adolescent (PA) treatment condition predicted significantly decreased emotional insecurity at 6 months through posttest attachment to fathers, relative to the control and parent-only conditions. Mother-adolescent attachment was improved in the PA condition at posttest but was not a significant mediator of subsequent adolescent emotional insecurity. Thus, the intervention's effects on father-adolescent attachment plays an important role in explaining the long-term effects of the intervention on emotional insecurity about the interparental relationship. Results also call attention to the value of including adolescents in interventions to improve interparental conflict and parent-child relationships.

Long-term interparental conflict behavior and knowledge change after a brief family intervention.

“…We also found that when fathers’ level of baseline marital adjustment was higher, there was less decline in dyadic conflict resolution between the posttest and 12-month assessment, a difference that was not found in the control conditions or with respect to mothers’ baseline marital adjustment. When considered together with previous published findings from the FCP sample that showed differentially positive gains in father–adolescent relationship outcomes after the intervention (Bergman et al, 2018; Cummings & Schatz, 2012; Hoegler et al, in press), the present findings may be indicative of a greater need to support fathers’ awareness of different ways to handle family conflict, especially when they are not feeling satisfied in their marriage and may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of marital conflict (Cummings, Merrilees, et al, 2010). Thus, future family-level interventions may benefit from the inclusion of content modules that are customized for each family member.…”

“…For example, mothers, fathers, and their adolescent children all showed statistically significant pretest to posttest increases in knowledge about how to handle family conflicts more constructively, and fathers in the treatment groups reported that their adolescents were more emotionally secure about both interparental and parent–adolescent relationships (Cummings & Schatz, 2012). Further, when adolescents participated in the intervention sessions with their parents, they reported significantly more secure attachment to their fathers and mothers at posttest (Cummings & Schatz, 2012; Hoegler et al, in press).…”

“…Complex effects related to the father–adolescent relationship were also apparent out to the 1-year follow-up assessment. Specifically, cross-lagged panel models showed that when adolescents participated together with their parents, increases in adolescents’ attachment to their fathers mediated the relationship between receiving the treatment and subsequent decreases in emotional insecurity in the interparental system (Hoegler et al, in press). The same relationship was not seen for adolescents’ attachment to their mothers.…”

Attachment Security with Mothers and Fathers: A Meta-Analysis on Mean-Level Differences and Correlations of Verbal Attachment Measures

“…Given the small mean-level differences in favor of security with mothers, more efforts are recommended to include fathers in interventions aimed at promoting secure attachment and positive family relationship. Recently, Hoegler et al (2023) showed that a family-based program aimed at improving the parent-child and marital relationship increased attachment security of adolescents with mothers and fathers.…”