Children's emotion understanding in relation to attachment to mother and father

Abstract

Although attachment plays a key role in children's socio-emotional development, little attention has been paid to the role of children's attachment to their father. This study examined whether insecure attachment to each parent was associated with reduced emotion understanding in children and whether children showed consistent attachments to their mother and father. We measured children's attachment to each parent using the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task and child emotion understanding using the Test of Emotion Comprehension (children's M = 5.64 years, SD = 0.84). The results indicated that insecure father-child attachment and insecure mother-child attachment were each associated with lower emotion understanding in children after controlling for parent's depressive symptoms and children's age. There was significant concordance of child attachment to mother and father. The findings provide support for convergence of children's attachment across parents and suggest that father-child attachment is an important factor to consider when examining children's emotion understanding. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject Secure mother-child attachment is positively associated with children's emotional competence. Children form similar representations of attachment to their mother and father. What the present study adds Both mother-child and father-child attachment are associated with children's emotion understanding. The study's findings highlight the importance of father-child attachment in their children's emotion understanding. The study provides support for concordance of children's attachment across parents.

A Comparison of Attachment representations to Mother and Father using the MCAST

“…However, it cannot be excluded that children may be generalizing from the attachment relationship with the mother to the relationship with the father. This may be particularly likely in the present study, considering that the MCAST stems were not originally developed based on prototypical situations frequent in the father-child interaction, as also suggested previously Psychogiou et al, 2018).…”

“…Notably, in the only study so far concerning attachment disorganization with respect to father (Miljkovitch et al , ), disorganization of attachment related to the father's own experiences was transmitted to the child in the form of preoccupation of attachment. It is also possible that bizarre themes emerge as children struggle to give the father a role within story stems that do not reflect prototypical father‐child attachment interactions (Di Folco et al , ; Psychogiou et al , ). Due to the shortage of research on disorganization of attachment to father, it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions on this finding.…”

“…In fact, few studies using story stems have included a father character, and even these studies did not specifically code for father attachment (Bernier & Miljkovitch, ; Miljkovitch, Danet & Bernier, ; Page & Bretherton, ; Portu‐Zapiraun, ; Seven & Ogelman, ). Separate MCAST administration addressing attachment to father specifically has only been carried out with two small samples of late‐adopted children (Barone & Lionetti, ; Piermattei, Pace, Tambelli, D'Onofrio & Di Folco, ), and in a recent study on children's emotion understanding (Psychogiou, Nath, Kallitsoglou et al , ). In the latter, attachment to mother and father, respectively, converged, while insecure father‐child attachment was related to lower level of emotion understanding, supporting the unique contribution of father‐child attachment for children's affect regulation.…”

Childhood Separation From Parents and Self-Harm in Adolescence: A Cross-Sectional Study in Mainland China

“…Surprisingly, it is unveiled that father involvement may exert a stronger effect on behavior and emotion of adolescents in a longitudinal study ( Flouri and Buchanan, 2003 ). It means that father plays a critical role in emotional comprehension ( Psychogiou et al, 2018 ). Therefore, we speculate that absence of father may result in adolescent emotional disorder, which may evoke self-injury.…”

Prenatal parental representations: Influences on perceived romantic couple adjustment and infant's temperament during pregnancy and after the infant's birth

“…Indeed, fathers become involved later in the caregiving of their infant (Samdan et al, 2020). Nonetheless, it is plausible to think that balanced fathers, who, since pregnancy, are engaged in the relationship with their infant, are flexible and invest in their paternal role, are more inclined to have a more positive perception of their infants' temperament; thus, a more regulating infant–father relationship (Cohen et al, 2019; Psychogiou et al, 2018).…”