Relating Preschoolers' Social Competence and their Mothers' Parenting Behaviors to Early Attachment Security and High-Risk Status

Abstract

Early attachment quality was related to social competence with an unfamiliar peer at age four, and to maternal management of peer interaction. Subjects were thirty-eight children, eighteen insecure and twenty securely attached children at twenty months. Approximately half of each group was middle-class and half was lower-class, high risk. At age four, each focal child and an unfamiliar play partner were videotaped during dyadic free play; the mother and the two children were videotaped building a house out of Duplo blocks. Behaviors of the mother and the focal child were coded using a social problem-solving framework. Results indicated that mothers of insecurely attached children were more adult-centered and less likely to use questions to meet their goals than were mothers of securely attached children. High-risk mothers were more adult-centered and more likely to use coercive, power assertive strategies than middle-class mothers. Four-year-old children who were insecurely attached as toddlers were more aggressive and their social interchanges were more likely to involve negative affect than securely attached children. Attachment x social class interactions suggested diverging maladaptive developmental pathways for insecures from different family environments.