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Antecedents of attachment states of mind in normative‐risk and high‐risk caregiving: cross‐race and cross‐sex generalizability in two longitudinal studies
Author(s) -
Haltigan John D.,
Roisman Glenn I.,
Groh Ashley M.,
Holland Ashley S.,
BoothLaForce Cathryn,
Rogosch Fred A.,
Cicchetti Dante
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/jcpp.13086
Subject(s) - generalizability theory , psychology , normative , race (biology) , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , epistemology , gender studies , philosophy , sociology
Background Longitudinal investigations of relatively large typical‐risk (e.g., Booth‐LaForce & Roisman, 2014) and higher‐risk samples (e.g., Raby et al., 2017; Roisman et al., 2017) have produced evidence consistent with the claim that attachment states of mind in adolescence and young adulthood, as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview ( AAI ), are associated with the quality of caregiving experienced during childhood. None of these studies, however, has examined whether such associations are consistent across sex and/or race, as would be expected in light of the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory. Methods We examine whether sex or race moderates previously reported links between caregiving and AAI states of mind in two longitudinal studies (pooled N = 1,058) in which caregiving was measured either within (i.e., observed [in]sensitive care) or outside (i.e., childhood maltreatment) of the normative range of caregiving experiences. Results Hierarchical moderated regression analyses in both longitudinal cohorts provided evidence that maternal insensitivity and experiences of maltreatment were prospectively associated with dismissing and preoccupied states of mind in adolescence, as hypothesized. Moreover, these associations were generally comparable in magnitude for African American and White/non‐Hispanic participants and were not conditional on participants’ biological sex. Conclusions Both maternal insensitivity and the experience of maltreatment increased risk for insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. Moreover, our analyses provided little evidence that either participant race or participant sex assigned at birth moderated these nontrivial associations between measures of the quality of experienced caregiving and insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. These findings provide support for the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory and inform the cultural universality hypothesis of attachment processes.