Early Attachment Network with Mother and Father: An Unsettled Issue

Abstract

Infants’ patterns of attachment to their mothers and fathers influence important developmental outcomes. Studies suggest that infants form discordant attachment patterns to mothers and fathers, and stress the importance of assessing infants’ parental attachment relationships to evaluate their integrative effects on how they function later in life. However, such studies are few, based on small samples, and not well‐designed longitudinally. Moreover, mixed results on how infants’ attachment patterns to mothers and fathers affect important developmental outcomes have resulted in theoretical inconsistencies regarding the model that best describes the organization of multiple attachment relationships and their effect on later development. In this article, we review research on the unsettled issue of infants’ network of attachment to mothers and fathers, and propose explanatory models that can be tested empirically; the methods we suggest are more robust and innovative than those that have been used traditionally.

Is one secure attachment enough? Infant cortisol reactivity and the security of infant-mother and infant-father attachments at the end of the first year

“…Important questions remain about whether attachment relationships to mothers and fathers jointly predict child development, and how to theorize about joint effects. Recently, Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz (2018) proposed a more family-friendly perspective by focusing on the network of infant attachment relationships with both mothers and fathers that they claim provides a more ecologically-valid approach to understanding infant development than investigating the infant's attachments with either parent alone. Further, understanding infant-parent attachments as a network of family relationships allows for more refined questions about the influence of multiple attachment relationships on development, such as (1) Does the number of secure attachments matter?…”

“…Here, we moved beyond the monotropic model proposed by Bowlby (1988) emphasizing the importance of a single attachment to a primary caregiver, and applied the integrative model proposed by Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz (2018) that assumes that the family network of infant attachment relationships to both mothers and fathers predicts child developmental outcomes better than a single infant-parent attachment relationship. To establish family-level patterns of attachment relationships, Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz proposed that attachments can be sorted into four configurations (i.e., secure to both parents, insecure to both, secure only to father, and secure only to mother), which then allows researchers to test four specific hypotheses about the effects of multiple attachment relationships on children's development.…”

“…Attachment theory posits that secure infant-parent attachment relationships are foundational for children's psychological and physiological functioning by (1) providing a safe haven, wherein infants rely on caregivers for comfort at times when they feel frightened, threatened, or stressed; and (2) a secure base, from which they can explore the world and learn about the environment (Bowlby, 1988;Cassidy, Jones, & Shaver, 2013). Because infants use caregivers to regulate their distress under threatening conditions, the quality of early attachment relationships can guide biobehavioral responses to threat, including infant stress reactivity and emotion regulation (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018;Diamond, Simpson, & Rholes, 2015). Although there are two major stress response systems, the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis, which releases cortisol, and the sympathetic-adrenomedullary system, which releases epinephrine and norepinephrine, developmental researchers have focused primarily on cortisol and the HPA axis because cortisol can cross the blood-brain barrier, whereas norepinephrine and epinephrine do not (Gunnar, Doom, & Esposito, 2015).…”

“…Much of the literature on early parent-infant attachment has focused predominantly on mothers as influential attachment figures, and far less on other individuals, including fathers (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018). Because fathers have become more involved in parenting in recent decades (McKelley & Rochlen, 2016), increasing numbers of studies have focused on fathers' interactions with infants, the effects of father involvement on infant development, and infant-father attachment relationships, in particular (Braungart-Rieker, Courtney, & Garwood, 1999;Bretherton, 2010;Lickenbrock & Braungart-Rieker, 2015;Volling & Belsky, 1992).…”

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

“…As mothers and fathers may interact with their children differently, the degree of comfort and sensitivity they can show towards the child may vary (Fox, Kimmerly & Schafer, ), which may result in differences in the child's attachment relationship to each parent. Attachment literature has acknowledged this possibility, suggesting that the quality in the child's caregiver‐specific attachment relationships may in some cases be discordant (Dagan & Sagi‐Schwartz, ). Comparisons of the importance of mother and father as caregivers, however, result in inconsistent results, suggesting the attachment relationship to the father to be less important (e.g., Lucassen, Tharner, Van IJzendoorn et al , ), or influential in a different way (e.g., Steele & Steele, ), but more recent findings highlight unique developmental benefits from the child's attachment to father, for instance with respect to control of aggressive behavior, popularity among peers, self‐worth, and – on a long term trajectory – internalizing and externalizing symptoms in adulthood (Groh et al , ; Kochanska & Kim, ; Lucassen et al , ; Sagi‐Schwartz & Aviezer, ).…”