Role of Parental Attachment Styles in Moderating Interaction Between Parenting Stress and Perceived Infant Characteristics

Abstract

By employing the transactional model of development and focusing on the multifactorial nature of parenting, this study aimed to (1) examine whether important risk factors, particularly mothers’ insecure attachment styles and parenting stress contribute to the perception of their infants’ characteristics and (2) explore whether maternal attachment styles moderate the relationship between parenting stress and perceived infants’ characteristics. We recruited 357 mothers (age: 34.23; ± 5.38) who had 1-year-old infants (161 males and 196 females; age: 12.70; ± 1.60 months). All the mothers completed three self-report instruments: Parenting Stress Index–Short Form (PSI-SF), Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ), and 1st-Year Inventory (FYI). Although the latter was originally developed to determine the risk for autism in 1-year-olds, it was employed in this study to measure infant’s characteristics within two domains: social communication and sensory regulatory functions. Multiple regression analyses revealed that one of the PSI-SF dimensions - specifically the Parent–Child Dysfunctional Interaction - contributed to mothers’ perceptions of their children’s social communication abilities, whereas the attachment style did not. Other multiple regression analyses showed that all the dimensions of parenting stress - that is, Parenting Distress (PD), Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction (PCDI), and Difficult Child (DC) - contributed to mothers’ perceptions of their sensory regulatory abilities. The attachment styles, particularly anxious attachment, contributed significantly to a biased perception of these abilities controlled for parenting stress. Mothers reporting high levels of avoidance and high levels of PD viewed their children as less able in the social communicative domain (SC Dom) than if they had low levels of PD. By contrast, when levels of avoidance were low, mothers with high PD perceived their children as less difficult in the SC Dom than those with low levels of PD. Moreover, high avoidance levels influenced how mothers who considered the interaction with their children as difficult perceived them as having greater difficulties in relation to sensory regulatory domain (SR Dom). By contrast, mothers with high levels of anxiety high levels of PD view their children as less able in the SC Dom than if they had low levels of PD. When mothers’ levels of anxiety were very low, those with high PD viewed their children as less difficult in the SC Dom in comparison to those with low levels of PD.

Psychodiagnostic Chart-Child (PDC-C): a valid and clinically sensitive diagnostic tool for patient-tailored intervention planning

“…Its great innovation is its prospective understanding of development, emphasizing the interaction between various factors underlying different psycho(patho)logies in children ( i.e ., physiological, neuropsychological, cognitive, social, emotional, representational) (Cicchetti & Cohen, 1995 ; Sroufe, 1997 ). Specifically, its childhood assessment considers: i) homotypic and heterotypic continuity ( i.e ., Costello & Angold, 1995 ; Costello et al ., 2003 ) in children’s functioning, to justify early interventions and the monitoring of therapeutic processes and outcomes in light of expected development pathways; ii) the link between early infancy and childhood, especially with regards to cognitive and social functioning and the extent to which these aspects affect children’s functioning during therapeutic treatment; iii) the importance of caregiver-child relationships in predicting problems during development ( i.e ., Sameroff & Emde, 1989 ; Speranza et al ., 2020 ; Quintigliano et al ., 2021 ); and iv) emerging personality patterns ( i.e ., Caspi et al ., 2005 ; Fortunato et al ., 2021 ; Lingiardi et al ., 2010 ; McAdams & Olson 2010 ; Tackett et al ., 2012 ; Widiger et al ., 2009 ), with an understanding that personality falls along a continuum ranging from relatively healthy to more compromised patterns, including conditions that do not reach the threshold for a personality disorder.…”

Children’s total blindness as a risk factor for early parent-child relationships: preliminary findings from an Italian sample

“…In the meantime, increased parenting stress in the early years can have adverse effects on the parent-child attunement, with cascading effects on the social brain development ( Azhari et al, 2019 ). For example, research on typically developing infants showed that the mother’s perception of infants’ sensory regulatory abilities is influenced by maternal stress linked to parenting ( Quintigliano et al, 2021 ). The current research sustains the importance of early family-centered interventions that support the child development by understanding the parents’ needs and their community ( Dempsey and Keen, 2008 ).…”

Heterotypic and homotypic continuity in psychopathology: a narrative review

“…The importance of the caregiver-child relationship as a protective or risk factor for development is well-known in the literature ( Cicchetti, 1984 ; Sroufe and Rutter, 1984 ; Emde and Sameroff, 1989 ; Carlson and Sroufe, 1995 ; Emde, 2018 ; Dollberg and Keren, 2020 ; Farina et al, 2020 ; Speranza et al, 2020 ; Quintigliano et al, 2021 ; Yirmiya et al, 2022 ; Quintigliano et al, 2023 ). It is thus essential to consider this relationship when investigating psychopathology continuity.…”