Rearing Styles, Parents' Attachment Mental State,and Children's Social Abilities: The Link to Peer Acceptance

Abstract

This paper examines the discriminant effect of mothers' and fathers' attachment working models, the quality of their relationships in everyday settings, and children's social abilities on children's peer acceptance. Participants were thirty-four 7–9 year olds, their mothers, and fathers. Interactions were observed at home and coded on global measures of positive, negative, controlling, disconfirming, correcting behaviors, and neutral conversation. Parents' IWM were assessed by the AAI. Children's peer acceptance and behavioral orientations as a measure of a child's social competence at school were assessed by sociometric techniques. By using both traditional statistical analyses and a multidimensional scaling approach (MDS), in terms of “similarity structure analysis (SSA)” and the “external variables as points technique,” it emerged that children's lack of success among peers associated with social behaviors which were linked to parents' rejecting/neglecting and directive interactive styles, mainly to negative, disconfirming, and a few positive interactions. These parenting styles were significantly affected by adults' insecure IWM.