adolescent parenting and attachment during infancy and early childhood

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Adolescent Parenting andAttachment During Infancy andEarly ChildhoodJulie J. Lounds , John G. Borkowski , Thomas L.Whitman , Scott E. Maxwell & Keri WeedPublished online: 18 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Julie J. Lounds , John G. Borkowski , Thomas L. Whitman , ScottE. Maxwell & Keri Weed (2005) Adolescent Parenting and Attachment During Infancyand Early Childhood, Parenting: Science and Practice, 5:1, 91-118, DOI: 10.1207/s15327922par0501_4

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Adolescent Parentingand Attachment During Infancy

and Early Childhood

Julie J. Lounds, John G. Borkowski,Thomas L. Whitman, Scott E. Maxwell, and Keri Weed

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Prenatal parenting attitudes and parenting behaviors during infancyand early childhood were used as predictors of attachment in children of ado-lescent mothers at ages 1 and 5. Design. Seventy-eight adolescent mother – childdyads participated. Data were collected at five time points from the third tri-mester of pregnancy through the children’s 5th year. Results. A high percentageof children exhibited disorganized and insecure attachment during both in-fancy and early childhood; only 30% were securely attached at 1 year and 41%at 5 years. Quality of maternal interactions and cognitive readiness to parentpredicted attachment stability; however, only verbal encouragement–stimu-lation predicted the transition from insecure to secure attachment. Prenatal cog-nitive readiness to parent independently predicted attachment security at 1year and accounted for the relation between early maternal interactions and1-year attachment. Maternal interactions during infancy but not early child-hood, predicted 5-year attachment security. Conclusions. Early parenting had aunique and persistent effect on attachment security. However, verbal stimula-tion during early childhood attenuated the effects of early maternal unrespon-siveness on attachment security at age 5.

INTRODUCTION

The study of attachment organization and its parenting precursors hastraditionally focused on middle-class European American infants. Ains-worth’s original premise that maternal sensitivity during mother– childinteractions is associated with infant attachment security has been con-firmed in a number of studies (Egeland & Farber, 1984; Pederson et al.,1990). Although we are learning more about attachment in high-risk popu-lations (Vondra & Barnett, 1999; Weinfield, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2000), thereare still unanswered questions about how parenting in infancy or earlychildhood influences attachment security in early childhood and whether

PARENTING: SCIENCE AND PRACTICE Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.January-March 2005 Volume 5 Number 1 Pages 91–118

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the same parenting variables that predict attachment outcomes also pre-dict the stability of attachment from infancy to early childhood, especiallyin at-risk populations (Vondra, Hommerding, & Shaw, 1999). This studysheds light on these issues, focusing on the antecedents of attachment inchildren with adolescent mothers at 1 and 5 years of age.

Typically, the attachment status of children has been evaluated throughthe Ainsworth Strange Situation paradigm (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, &Wall, 1978) in which attachment ratings are based mainly on children’s re-sponses to reunion episodes with the parent (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton,1971). Securely attached (B) children use the primary caregiver as a basefrom which to explore and learn from their environments. When dis-tressed, these infants seek comfort from, and are calmed by, their attach-ment figure (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Children classified as insecure–avoidant (A) actively ignore or avoid the parent on reunion, whereas inse-cure ambivalent (C) children show anger and an inability to be soothedwhen reunited (Main & Weston, 1981). In contrast, infants who display dis-organized (D) attachment appear to possess no coherent mechanisms forcoping with the stress of separation and reunion. In the Strange Situationparadigm, D infants blend contradictory features of several strategies(such as strong proximity seeking followed by strong avoidance) or appeardazed and disoriented on reunion with their caregivers (Carlson, Cicchetti,Barnett, & Braunwald, 1989).

Adolescent mothers generally have higher rates of insecure and dis-organized children than low-risk mothers. Spieker and Bensley (1994),studying 197 adolescent mother–infant dyads, found significantly moreinsecurely attached infants (50%) in this population compared to norma-tive low-risk, U.S. samples (25–30%). Relatedly, Ward and Carlson (1995),examining 94 adolescent primiparas, found that 51% of children of adoles-cent mothers were rated as insecurely attached with a relatively high per-centage disorganized (18%). Similar results have been found in a numberof other adolescent mother – child dyads (Frodi et al., 1984; Lamb, Hopps,& Elster, 1987). Particularly striking are the results of a study by Broussard(1995), in which the attachment style of 38 infants born to adolescent moth-ers was assessed; only 23.7% of the infants were classified as secure (as op-posed to the 70% expected in a normative, low-risk sample); even moredisturbing, 31.6% of the infants were classified as disorganized. A meta-analysis of the prevalence of disorganized attachment (van IJzendoorn,Schuengel, & Bakermans-Kranenberg, 1999) estimated that about 15% ofchildren in middle-class, nonclinical groups were disorganized, as op-posed to 23% of children born to adolescent mothers.

Not only are adolescent mothers more likely to have children who areinsecure or disorganized but also they may be more likely than low-risk,

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adult populations to have children who change attachment classificationsthroughout infancy and early childhood. Research with low-risk sampleshas found as many as 88% of children remain in the same attachment cate-gory from infancy to early childhood (Main & Cassidy, 1988; Wartner,Grossmann, Fremmer-Bombik, & Suess, 1994); other studies have foundlower but still substantial percentages of children remaining in the samecategory in low-risk samples (Frodi, Grolnick, & Bridges, 1985; Main &Weston, 1981). A meta-analysis of attachment stability suggested that amodel that assumed stability in attachment representations throughoutchildhood and into early adulthood was a better fit for low-risk samplesthan a model that assumed instability (Fraley, 2002). However, when therewere particularly chaotic or dysfunctional home environments, which isoften the case for children of adolescent mothers, children were able to ex-ert less of an influence on their environment and attachment became lessstable. Although few studies have specifically addressed attachment sta-bility in children of adolescent mothers, researchers have found low ratesof attachment stability (from 30 to 64%) when examining other high-risksamples such as maltreated or low-income children (Egeland & Sroufe,1981; Schneider-Rosen, Braunwald, Carlson & Cicchetti, 1985; Spieker &Booth, 1988).

The quality of the attachment relationship between parent and child isrelated to the history of care received from the parent (Ainsworth et al.,1978). Although various research studies have supported the role of childand maternal characteristics in determining attachment security (Carter,Garrity-Rokous, Chazan-Cohen, Little, & Briggs-Gowan, 2001; Seifer,Schiller, Sameroff, Resnick, & Riordan, 1996; Susman-Stillman, Kalkose,Egeland, & Waldman, 1996), the variable most consistently predictive ofmother – child attachment is maternal sensitivity. This construct has beendefined as alertness to infant signals, appropriate interpretation of re-sponse, promptness of response, flexibility of attention and behavior, ap-propriate level of control, and negotiation of conflicting goals (Ainsworthet al., 1978). Meta-analyses examining the effects of the sensitivity con-struct have found overall significant but moderate correlations betweenmaternal sensitivity and attachment security; this relation was further at-tenuated in low SES and clinical samples (DeWolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997;Goldsmith & Alansky, 1987), suggesting that other characteristics of thecaregiving relationship likely influence attachment.

One such influence is child maltreatment, the extreme of problematicparenting, which poses a significant threat to the development of secureattachment. Not only does it increase the risk for insecure and disorga-nized attachment patterns during childhood (Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991;Crittenden, 1988) but it continues to influence attachment into late adoles-

ADOLESCENT PARENTING AND ATTACHMENT 93

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cence and early adulthood (Weinfield et al., 2000). Adolescent mothers areat particular risk for abusive behavior (Andreozzi, Flanagan, Seifer, Brun-ner, & Lester, 2002; Black, Heyman, & Slep, 2001), which may help to ac-count for elevated instances of insecure attachment among their children.Another influence on attachment security is mothers’ cognitive readinessfor the parenting role, which has been defined as three components: (1) anattitudinal predisposition to being a parent; (2) possessing knowledge ofchild development; and (3) understanding what constitutes appropriateparenting practices (Sommer et al., 1993). In a sample of adolescent moth-ers, cognitive readiness to parent measured during pregnancy predictedchildren’s attachment status at 12 months as well as the quality of mother –child interactions when children were 3 years of age (Whitman, Bor-kowski, Keogh, & Weed, 2001).

Seifer and Schiller (1995) pointed out that there are numerous compo-nents of parenting, each of which taps a different aspect of parenting skills.Because children’s behaviors change dramatically throughout infancy andinto early childhood, it is not surprising that the “appropriate” parentalrole also changes with children’s development (Waters, Kondo-Ikemura,Posada, & Richters, 1991). For example, Goldsmith and Alansky (1987)suggested that optimal parenting typically involves allowing more auton-omy as children age, opening the possibility for different maternal vari-ables to predict attachment security at different ages. We suspect thatparenting variables operate differently in predicting secure attachmentand adaptive functioning at different developmental periods and exam-ined this issue in this research.

An interesting question arises when considering the impact ofparenting from a longitudinal perspective: Do specific aspects of parentingquality have different predictive roles depending on when they occur inchildren’s development? Attachment theory predicts that early respon-siveness — a major component of sensitivity and overall quality ofparenting — provides the foundation that allows children to feel secureand to develop a basic trust of their caregivers (Ainsworth et al., 1978) and,therefore, may be more predictive than later responsiveness. Although re-search addressing timing effects associated with specific parenting behav-iors on attachment quality is sparse in general, and nonexistent in adoles-cent mother – child samples, research on responsiveness in the 1st year oflife is consistently predictive of children’s later socialization (e.g., Lewis,1993; Londerville & Main, 1981) even after controlling for later responsive-ness. For instance, Landry, Smith, Swank, Assel, and Vellet (2001) foundthat responsiveness in the first 2 years of life predicted children’s social de-velopment. Similarly, Wakschlag and Hans (1999) reported that respon-siveness during infancy influenced behavior problems during adoles-

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cence, regardless of the level of concurrent parental responsiveness. Thesestudies support the unique role of responsiveness during infancy in chil-dren’s development. In contrast, Kochanska (1998) found a correlation be-tween attachment and current measures of responsiveness and positivitybut not with those measures taken an average of 5 months previous to theassessment of attachment. These contradictory findings suggest that moreresearch is needed to determine whether early responsiveness has aunique influence on children’s later attachment quality in both low andhigh risk samples.

Another aspect of parenting that has been linked to children’s develop-ment is the extent of a parent’s use of language in parent – child interac-tions. Although the specific timing effects of “verbalness” on attachmentquality are unknown, the lack of verbal stimulation and encouragementhas been associated with developmental delays in a number of domains,including deficits in language development, unskilled use of objects dur-ing infancy, internalizing problems, and poor communication skills inearly childhood (Borkowski et al., 2002; Stewart, 1973). Furthermore, DeWolff and van IJzendoorn (1997) identified a cluster of maternal behaviors,labeled “stimulation,” which included encouragement and effective stim-ulation; the cluster was predictive of attachment security. Teen mothers of-ten have deficits in language and in the use of verbal encouragement withtheir infants (Lamb & Elster, 1990; Luster & Mittelstaedt, 1993) whichcould account, in part, for the high incidence of insecure attachment intheir children.

This study addresses gaps in the extant literature concerning the devel-opmental timing and effects of parenting — as defined by responsiveness,verbal encouragement and stimulation, and child abuse potential duringinfancy and childhood as well as prenatal cognitive readiness to parent —on the attachment of adolescent mother – child dyads. The participants inthis study were part of the Notre Dame Adolescent Parenting Project, alongitudinal project examining adolescent mothers and their childrenfrom pregnancy through childhood (Whitman et al., 2001). When mea-sured during the third trimester of their pregnancies, these mothers haddeficits in IQ, high levels of internalizing and externalizing problems, andwere not cognitively prepared for their parenting roles as evidenced byless knowledge about infant and child development, problematicparenting beliefs, and punitive parenting styles (Whitman et al., 2001).Furthermore, after the birth of their children, many teenage mothers exhib-ited less appropriate and sensitive interactions with their children as wellas elevated child abuse potential as compared to adult mothers (Whitmanet al., 2001). These characteristics, along with low socioeconomic status(SES) and teenage status at first birth, place adolescent mothers at high risk


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for inconsistent or even inappropriate parenting practices that can lead toinsecure attachment.

The overall aim of this research was to discern if aspects of parentingquality in infancy and early childhood predicted attachment differentlydepending on when they were measured. To address this question, the dis-tribution of attachment categories in children of adolescent mothers wasexamined at the two time points and their stability determined. The stabil-ity of attachment was analyzed in terms of the quality of parenting at 1 and5 years as well as the potential for child abuse during infancy and earlychildhood and prenatal cognitive readiness to parent. Finally, relations be-tween responsiveness and verbal stimulation, as well as other indices ofparenting during infancy and early childhood (i.e., the potential for childphysical abuse and cognitive readiness to parent), and 1- and 5-year at-tachment were evaluated.

METHODS

Participants

The larger sample consisted of 152 adolescent mother – child dyads whowere part of a longitudinal study designed to examine the development ofadolescent mothers and their children (Whitman et al., 2001). Of these, 78dyads had data available from the third trimester of pregnancy throughthe children’s fifth year and thus were selected for this study. Participantswho were included did not differ from the remainder of the sample on anyof the variables examined, such as age at childbirth, SES , educational level,or prenatal maternal intelligence. Participants lived in either a middle-sized, Midwestern urban area or a rural Southern community. The locationof the sample was unrelated to a number of demographic variables includ-ing age at childbirth, SES , and years of completed education. The majoritywas recruited through local School-Aged Mothers Alternative EducationPrograms; various social and medical service agencies were also used forrecruitment. The mean age of the target sample at the time of the initialevaluation was 17.20 years (SD = 1.29, range = 14.00–19.60).

Fifty-one percent of the children were male, and 49% were female. Theracial makeup of this sample was 68% African American, 28% EuropeanAmerican, and 4% Mexican American. Four percent of the pregnant ado-lescents were married at the time of the initial interview, and the majorityof adolescents (84%) lived with their mothers and fathers during preg-nancy and depended on their parents for financial support. SES was deter-mined at the prenatal interview through the participants’ reports of the ed-

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ucation and employment status of the adults with whom they resided, asthe teens generally were not self-supporting (Whitman et al., 2001). Possi-ble scores on the Hollingshead Two-Factor Index of Social Position rangefrom 11 to 77, with higher scores indicating lower status (Hollingshead &Redlich, 1958). The average score on the Hollingshead index (M = 56.03,SD = 14.29) suggested that the adolescents generally came from lower-SEShomes. Utilizing the Hollingshead five-level classification system, approx-imately 75% of the households fell into the lower two levels of SES. Duringpregnancy the average IQ of the adolescents, as measured by the WAIS,was 86.13 (SD = 11.77), and 38% reported that they were currently attend-ing school. Information obtained from hospital birth records indicatedthat, in general, the infants were healthy at birth with no serious medicalcomplications. The average 6-month Bayley mental development scorewas within normal range (M = 98.30, SD = 16.35).

When the children reached 5 years of age, the mothers’ average IQ was86.25 (SD = 11.28), they had on average completed 11 years of education,and 52% were employed. At this point in time, 79% of the mothers weresingle, 14% were married, and 7% were either divorced or separated. Ap-proximately one fourth (26%) of the mothers were living with their moth-ers and fathers, and another 4% were living with siblings; 70% were livingeither independently or with a partner. Seventy-nine percent had not beenmarried at their first child’s fifth birthday, whereas 20% had been marriedonce and 1% married twice. Twenty percent of the mothers had 3 or morechildren; 48% had 2 children, and 33% had no additional children after thetarget child.

Design

Data collection was conducted at five time points: the third trimesterof pregnancy and when each child reached 6 months, 12 months, 3 years,and 5 years of age. The outcome variable, attachment, was assessed at 1and 5 years of age. The indexes of parenting were child abuse potentialmeasured when the children were 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years old; thequality of observed maternal interactions which was measured at 6months, 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years of age; cognitive readiness to parentwas measured during the third trimester of pregnancy. The measurementperiods were grouped to reflect early and later developmental periods:“Early” scores consisted of those measurements taken prenatally andduring infancy (previous to or simultaneous with 12-month attachmentvisits), whereas “later” scores were taken during early childhood (3 and5 years of age).


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The quality of mother – child interactions was measured at 6 and 12months, and again at 3 and 5 years of age. Early maternal interactionalquality was indexed as an average of the 6-month and 1-year scores; laterquality of mother – child interactions consisted of the 3-year and 5-yearscores. Maternal child abuse potential was measured at three time points:The 12-month measurement formed the early child abuse potential vari-able, whereas the later abuse potential score consisted of an aggregate ofthe 3-year and 5-year measurements. Early cognitive readiness to parentwas represented by the prenatal score.

Measure of Infant – Mother Attachment

QualityofattachmentwasassessedinthestandardizedStrangeSituationprocedure (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969) at 12 months and scored by a blind,off-site rater. Classifications were made in terms of secure (B), inse-cure–avoidant (A), insecure–resistant (C) (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and inse-cure disorganized–disoriented (D) groups (Main & Solomon, 1986). Theinsecure–avoidant and insecure–resistant groups were assigned to a singlecategoryduetothesmallnumberofresistantchildrenat12months(n=3).

Attachment status at 5 years was measured using the Strange Situationand was scored using the Preschool Attachment Assessment System(Cassidy & Marvin, 1992) by the same, off-site rater. There was a consider-able time lag between the 1-year and 5-year attachment scoring (approxi-mately 5 years), with data stored at Notre Dame and separated at all timesfrom the coder. Hence, the rater was unlikely to remember the 1-year at-tachment scores when scoring 5-year attachment tapes, and it is reasonableto conclude that the 5-year ratings were unbiased. Each dyad was classi-fied as secure (B), insecure–avoidant (A), insecure–resistant (C), insecure–other (I-O), or insecure–disorganized (D). The I-O category refers to an at-tachment pattern that does not fit avoidant or resistant categories but is nota pattern generally observed in disorganized attachment. The I-O categorywas only scored at age 5; to have comparable attachment categories at 1and 5 years, the I-Os (n = 7) were grouped with the disorganized categorybecause their attachment behaviors were most similar to this group. Fur-thermore, similar to 1-year attachment, the avoidant and resistant childrenwere classified into a single group because of the small number of resistantchildren at 5 years (n = 1). For both the 1-year and 5-year scoring systems,the rater established interrater reliability of .87 with other trained raters.The organized insecure group is referred to as “insecure,” and the inse-cure-disorganized group is referred to as “disorganized.”

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Parenting Measures

Mother – child interactions. To observe the quality of mother – child inter-actions, samples of maternal behavior were rated from videotapes of struc-tured age appropriate, toy-play interactions between mothers and chil-dren conducted in the laboratory at 6 months, 12 months, 3 years, and 5years of age.1 The tasks were intended to challenge the child to examine theextent and type of assistance offered by the mother (Whitman et al., 2001).

These interactions were videotaped and rated using the Maternal Inter-action Scale (MIS) which is a behavioral measure of observed parenting de-veloped to assess 11 dimensions of maternal parenting style, each of whichwas rated on a 6 point Likert-type scale: interactional orientation, control,attention, flexibility, verbal exchanges, positiveness, affectional match, rateof stimulation, appropriate direction, appropriate motivation, and overallquality of mothering (Passino et al., 1993). A description of each dimen-sion, including examples of high and low scores, is presented in the Ap-pendix. Tapes were rated by graduate and undergraduate students whodid not have prior contact with the participants or with the data. These rat-ers established interrater reliability with the project coordinator, eachother, and a coordinator from another site after an extensive practice andtraining period. Periodic reliability checks were also conducted through-out the rating process. Evaluations of interrater reliability indicated goodagreement (rs = .81, .66, .73, and .90 at 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years,respectively). Evidence of discriminative validity was found in a compari-son of adolescent and adult mother – infant interactions at 6 months. Usingall the dimensions of observed parenting behaviors, adolescent motherswere correctly classified as adolescent 72% of the time, and the adult moth-ers were correctly classified 70% of the time (Whitman et al., 2001).

Factor analysis was used to understand the interrelations among the 11MIS items. A Promax (oblique) rotation was used, allowing factors to becorrelated. Factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were utilized. Separatefactor analyses at each age supported the creation of 2 subscales: MaternalResponsiveness and Verbal Stimulation–Encouragement (Borkowski et al.,2002). In the interest of parsimony, the Verbal Stimulation and Encourage-ment subscale will be referred to as Verbal Stimulation, consisting ofverbalness, appropriate motivation, and positiveness dimensions. Coeffi-cient alphas for the Verbal Stimulation subscale, based on the intercor-


1Further information regarding the structure of the toy-play interactions at each age canbe obtained from the first author.

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relations of the three items, range from .75 to .83. The Maternal Respon-siveness subscale consisted of the control, flexibility, rate of stimulation,and affectional match dimensions of maternal parenting style. Alpha re-liabilities for Maternal Responsiveness were generally higher, rangingfrom .83 to .90. In this sample, the two subscales correlated .76 with eachother at 6 months, .55 at 1 year, .78 at 3 years, and .66 at 5 years; on averagetheir composite (consisting of 7 items) correlated .98 with the total score us-ing all 11 items. For the purpose of this study, a composite of the twosubscales will be used as the overall index of the quality of mother – childinteractions (MIS). Correlations between MIS scores were moderate acrosstime, ranging from .29 to .52; scores temporally closer together evidencedmore stability than scores farther apart (e.g., r = .52 for 3 and 5 year scores,whereas r = .29 for 6-month and 5-year scores). Similar relations andcorrelational patterns were found when examining the relations betweenMIS subscales.

Child abuse potential. Abuse potential was assessed using an abbreviatedversion of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAPI; Milner, 1986) whenthe children were 1, 3, and 5 years of age. The abbreviated version con-tained 25 items selected primarily from the rigidity and unhappinesssubscales of the CAPI, which reflect psychological distress typical of abu-sive parents. These two dimensions have been found to distinguish abu-sive from non-abusive individuals, and each has accounted for a majoramount of variance in the full CAPI scores. Respondents were asked to in-dicate their agreement or disagreement with statements relating to eachsubscale. For example, “Everything in a home should always be in itsplace.” or “I have several close friends in my neighborhood.” A total scorewas obtained by summing all of the items indicative of the potential forphysical child abuse, with a higher score indicating a higher potential toabuse. Scores were correlated among 1, 3, and 5 years — correlation coeffi-cients ranged from .64 to .72 — demonstrating some stability throughoutearly childhood.

Cognitive readiness to parent. The Cognitive Readiness to Parent con-struct contained measures that looked at the mother’s beliefs about childdevelopment, her role as a parent, and her parenting style. Three question-naires were used to measure this construct: Knowledge and Expectanciesabout Child Development, Child Centeredness-Role Reversal, and Par-enting Style.

Maternal knowledge and expectancies about child development wereexamined by a 39-item questionnaire. The pregnant adolescents wereasked to identify developmentally normative behavior in children on 19

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multiple-choice items. An example of this type of time was “Most babiesbegin sitting up with some support by (1) 3 months, (2) 6 months, (3) 9months, (4) 12 months.” These questions were developed from the mate-rial covered in an introductory psychology textbook and a child develop-ment textbook (Bourne & Ekstrand, 1973; Yussen & Santrock, 1984). Theremaining 20 items were taken from expectations subscale of theAdult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory (Bavolek, 1985). The questions ex-amined the adolescents’ expectations about normative development (e.g.,“Children should be expected to verbally express themselves before theage of 1 year.”). These items were rated on a 4-point scale from 1 (stronglyagree) to 4 (strongly disagree). The rating scale items were converted to di-chotomous variables so that they could be combined with the dichoto-mous multiple-choice items. Based on the entire 152 participant samplefrom the larger project, the internal consistency of this instrument wasfound to be .70; the test-retest reliability, over a 6-month interval, was .49(Sommer et al., 1993).

Child centeredness and role reversal scores were obtained from a 20-item questionnaire examining parental attitudes toward children, and theroles of parents and children in caregiving relationships. More specifically,child centeredness addressed the mothers’ orientation toward becoming amother and putting the child’s needs above her own (e.g., “I am reallylooking forward to being a mother.”). Conversely, the role reversal itemsreflected maternal expectations about the child’s responsibility to care forthe mother (e.g., “Young children should hug their mom when she issad.”). The role reversal items were also taken from the Adult-AdolescentParenting Inventory (Bavlovek, 1985). The internal consistency of this in-strument was .74, and test-retest reliability over a 6-month period was .63.The ratings were summed to produce the total score.

The Parenting Style questionnaire consisted of items from the Adult-Ad-olescent Parenting Inventory (Bavlovek, 1985), and asked mothers to rate ei-ther 1 (how strongly they agreed) or 5 (how strongly they disagreed) with variousstatements regarding childrearing. The scale contained 32 items regardingparenting practices, discipline, and appropriateness of child interactions.Four subscales were reflected in this instrument; Responsiveness–empathy,punishment, abuse–neglect, and authoritarianism. All item ratings weresummed to provide the Parenting Style score. The internal consistency ofthis scale was .89, and the test-retest reliability was .87.

The overall Cognitive Readiness of Parenting score was obtained bysumming the z scores for the Knowledge and Expectations questionnairewith the z scores for the Child Centeredness–Role Reversal and ParentingStyle questionnaires. Lower total scores reflected poorer preparation forparenting. Test-retest reliability over a 6-month period was .72 for adoles-


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cent mothers (Sommer et al., 1993). Similar reliabilities for the total scoreand subscale scores were found in the subsample reported in this study.

RESULTS

Attachment Classifications and Stability Between Infancyand Early Childhood

Table 1 contains the distributions of attachment at 1 and 5 years as wellas their cross-classification. At 1 year, the majority of children were classi-fied as disorganized (45%) or insecure (24%); only 31% were securely at-tached. At 5 years, the incidence of secure attachment increased to 41% andinsecure attachment to 41%; 18% of the sample was disorganized.

Approximately 41% of the children exhibited stable attachment classifi-cations between 1 and 5 years. The majority of those who were secure at 1year remained secure at 5 (63%). However, 42% of the children who wereinsecure at 1 year became secure at 5 years. The majority of the childrenwho were disorganized at 1 year became insecure at 5 years (51%), 23% re-mained disorganized, and 26% became securely attached. Thus, the majorchanges in attachment were from disorganized to insecure attachment andinsecure to secure attachment, although some movement occurred fromsecure to insecure categories. Movement into the disorganized categoryfrom other categories was minimal (8%).

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TABLE 11-Year Attachment by 5-Year Attachment Contingency Table

1-YearClassification

5-Year Classification 1-Year Total

B A or C D N %

B Count 15 5 4 24 30.8Row % 62.5 20.8 16.7Column % 46.9 15.6 28.6

A or C Count 8 9 2 19 24.4Row % 42.1 47.4 10.5Column % 25.0 28.1 14.3

D Count 9 18 8 35 44.9Row % 25.7 51.4 22.9Column % 28.1 56.3 57.1

5-year total N 32 32 14 78% 41.0 41.0 17.9

Note. Boldface diagonal values indicate stable classifications. A = insecure/avoidant; B= secure; C = insecure/resistant; D = insecure/disorganized.

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Predicting Attachment Stability

Before examining the parenting predictors of 1- and 5-year attachment,the predictors of attachment stability–instability were evaluated. Partici-pants were classified into three groups: (1) stable optimal attachment (O-O;n = 15), which included children who were securely attached at both 1 and5 years of age; (2) stable non-optimal attachment (N-N; n = 37), which con-sisted of children who were insecure at both time points, disorganized atboth time points, or insecure at one and disorganized at the other; and (3)non-optimal to optimal attachment (N-O; n = 17), in which children weredisorganized or insecure at 1 year of age but securely attached at 5 years.

Children who were securely attached at 1 year and insecure or disorga-nized at 5 years were not included in the analysis of attachment stabilitydue to small subgroup sample size (n = 9) and because their childhood ex-periences were particularly traumatic or disrupted relative to the remain-ing sample. For example, 4 children experienced or witnessed physicalabuse during this time, 2 children did not live with their mothers for a sub-stantial period between 1 and 5 years, and in almost all of these cases therewere considerable shifts in household composition.

Analysis of variance was used to determine which parenting variables— early and later maternal interactions, early and later child abuse poten-tial, and cognitive readiness to parent — predicted stability and instability,which were treated as nominal categories. Means, standard deviations,and samples sizes for each type of stability subgroup as a function ofparenting or maternal variables can be found in Table 2. The quality of bothearly and later maternal interactions was related to stability in attachmentclassification, Fs (2, 66) = 4.63 and 4.96, respectively, ps < .05. Furthermore,prenatal cognitive readiness was related to stability–instability in attach-ment, F (2, 66) = 5.43, p < .01. Pairwise comparisons were performed to de-termine which stability groups differed on MIS and cognitive readinessscores. Both early and later maternal interactional styles as well as cogni-tive readiness distinguished stable optimal and stable non-optimal catego-ries, Fs (1, 66) = 7.95, 9.20, and 10.28 respectively, ps < .01: Children whowere securely attached at both time points had a higher quality of maternalinteractions, both early and late in their development, as well as motherswho were more cognitively prepared prior to childbirth when contrastedwith children who were insecure or disorganized at both time points.

In addition to examining the overall effects of the quality of maternal in-teractions, the two components of maternal interactions were examined todetermine their differential effects on attachment stability. Of the earlysubscales, only responsiveness was associated with stability or change inattachment category, F (2, 66) = 5.21, p < .05. Pairwise comparisons re-


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vealed that early responsiveness was related to the two most extreme cate-gories, F (1, 66) = 7.57, p < .01: Children who were securely attached at bothtime points had mothers who were more responsive in infancy than chil-dren who were insecure or disorganized at both time points.

Both later responsiveness and verbal stimulation were also related tostability–change in attachment category from 1 to 5 years of age, Fs (2, 66) =5.21 and 4.49, ps < .05. Pairwise comparisons revealed that, similar to earlyresponsiveness, later maternal responsiveness differentiated children whowere securely attached at both time points from children who were inse-cure or disorganized at both time points, F (1, 66) = 10.17, p < .01. Mothers’verbal stimulation during early childhood not only differentiated betweenthese two categories, F (1,66) = 7.17, p < .01 but also between the childrenwho were insecure or disorganized at both time points and those who be-came securely attached at 5 years, F (1, 66) = 4.36, p < .05.

Analysis of covariance was used to determine if either of the subscalespredicted stable attachment categories above and beyond the othersubscale; that is, whether either or both subscales were uniquely related to

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TABLE 2Descriptive Statistics for Parenting Variables by

Stable Attachment Categories

Stable Attachment Classification

O–Oa N–Ob N–Nc

Predictor M SD M SD M SD

Early Parenting VariablesCognitive Readiness* .35a .90 .02 .64 –.32a .61Child Abuse Potential 6.87 5.19 8.88 3.90 9.54 4.04Maternal Interactions* 28.7a 4.70 27.09 6.48 23.89a 5.60

Early MIS subscalesResponsiveness* 17.43a 3.01 16.12 4.59 14.33a 3.46Verbal Stimulation 11.08 2.15 10.97 2.74 9.65 2.56

Later Parenting VariablesChild Abuse Potential 7.67 4.46 8.32 3.66 9.58 3.19Maternal Interactions** 30.63a 6.60 27.88 7.10 24.60a 6.17

Later MIS subscalesResponsiveness** 18.51a 3.74 16.24 4.43 14.53a 4.03Verbal Stimulation* 12.26a 2.52 11.70b 3.07 10.06a,b 2.57

Note. O–O = stable optimal; N–O = becoming optimal from non-optimal; N–N = stablenon-optimal. Means that share a common subscript in the same row are significantly differ-ent at the p < .05 level.

an = 15. bn = 17. cn = 37.*p < .05. **p < .01.

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the outcome variable. Neither of the later subscales was associated with at-tachment stability when the mothers’ scores on the corresponding earliersubscale were held constant. Similar results were found for the earliersubscales when controlling for the later MIS subscales, indicating that nei-ther early nor later parenting played a unique role when considering at-tachment stability. More responsive mothers, both in infancy and earlychildhood, had children who were securely attached at 1 year of age andremained so at 5; less responsive mothers had children who were insecure(organized or disorganized) at 1 and 5. Responsiveness differentiated be-tween the children who were consistently secure or insecurely attached;however, it was not related to whether a child became securely attached at5 years from an initial status of insecure. Children who were first observedas disorganized or insecure but became secure at 5 years had mothers whowere more verbally stimulating and encouraging during early childhoodthan children who remained insecure or disorganized at 5.

Predicting 1-Year and 5-Year Attachment

One-year attachment. Table 3 presents the means and standard devia-tions for each parenting variable for each type of attachment at 1 year.Intercorrelations of attachment categories and measures of parenting canbe found in Table 4. For correlational analyses, attachment was analyzedon a continuous scale, with a 1 indicating a child who was insecure-disor-



1-Year Attachment Categories

Attachment Classification

Ba A or Cb Dc


Early parenting variablesCognitive Readiness .36 0.79 –.03 0.58 –.31 0.64Child Abuse Potential 7.75 4.70 8.54 3.86 9.76 4.02Maternal Interactions 27.09 5.78 28.40 6.75 22.99 4.65

Early MIS subscalesResponsiveness 16.34 3.34 17.13 4.25 13.68 3.13Verbal Stimulation 10.58 2.21 13.68 2.91 9.43 2.31

Note. A = insecure/avoidant; B = secure; C = insecure/resistant; D = disorganized.Higher scores indicate more cognitive readiness for parenting, higher potential to abuse, andmore positive maternal interactions, responsiveness, and verbal stimulation.

an = 24. bn = 19. cn = 35.

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ganized, a score of 2 indicating a child who demonstrated organized inse-curity (avoidant or resistant), and a score of 3 indicating secure attachment.

Multinomial logistic regression (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001) was used toexamine the relations between early parenting variables — namely, the ag-gregate of 6-month and 1-year quality of maternal interactions (MIS), childabuse potential (CAPI) at 1 year, and prenatal maternal cognitive readinessto parent — and children’s 1-year attachment security. Although multi-nomial logistic regression is similar to logistic regression, it is more generalin that the dependent variable may have more than two categories; that is,the categories of the dependent variable can then be treated as nominal orordinal. Through this technique it is possible to test the assumption ofordinality; a chi-square test is performed which, if non significant, sug-gests that values of the dependent variable differ from each other in an or-dered fashion. Because we hypothesized that the relations between attach-ment categories and parenting variables were ordered (with disorganizedchildren having the lowest scores, insecure children having intermediatescores, and secure children having the highest scores), we treated the at-tachment variable as ordinal. The ordering of attachment categories wassupported by findings suggesting that mothers generally have the mostproblematic parenting practices as their children are disorganized, withparenting being less problematic when the children evidence organizedpatterns of insecurity; the most sensitive parenting occurs as children aresecurely attached (Barnett, Kidwell, & Leung, 1998; Moss, St-Laurent, &Parent, 1999; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2001).

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TABLE 4Intercorrelations Between Attachment and Parenting Predictors

1-Year Attachment Category 5-Year Attachment Category

Cognitive Readiness .39** .24*Early CAPI –.21 –.23*Early MIS .33** .36**Later CAPI –.22 –.23*Later MIS .25* .27*5-year attachment .26* —MIS subscales

Early VSE .22 .30**Early RE .33** .33**Later VSE .20 .26*Later RE .30** .26*

Note. MIS = maternal interactions; CAPI = child abuse potential; VSE = verbal stimula-tion and encouragement; RE = responsiveness.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

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The chi-square, testing the proportional odds assumption, was non-sig-nificant, χ2(3, N = 78) = 6.04, thus supporting the assumption of ordinality.The overall model significantly predicted 1-year attachment, χ2(3, N = 78)= 13.18, p < .01; however, when testing the individual parameter estimates,only cognitive readiness to parent uniquely predicted attachment classifi-cation, χ2(1, N = 78) = 6.61, p < .05, with an odds ratio of .36 (95% confidenceinterval = .17 – .79). Although the quality of maternal interactions was re-lated to attachment when entered as the sole independent variable, χ2(1, N= 78) = 7.23, p < .01, this relation was not significant when cognitive readi-ness was entered simultaneously.

Five-year attachment. Means and standard deviations of early and laterMIS, early and later CAPI, and early cognitive readiness for each 5-year at-tachment classification are presented in Table 5. Two multinomial logisticregression models were tested — the first predicting 5-year attachmentfrom quality of early maternal interactions, early child abuse potential, andearly cognitive readiness, and the second predicting 5-year attachmentfrom later scores for maternal interactions and abuse potential. Chi-squares for both the early and later parenting models were non-significantindicating that the parenting variables predicted 5-year attachment in an



5-Year Attachment Categories

Attachment Classification

Ba A or Cb Dc


Early parenting variablesCognitive Readiness .18 .78 –.14 .74 –.30 .46Child Abuse Potential 7.93 4.59 8.95 3.93 10.67 3.72Maternal Interactions 27.87 5.69 24.65 5.93 22.39 3.27

Early MIS subscalesResponsiveness 16.73 3.93 14.76 3.70 13.46 2.36Verbal Stimulation 11.02 2.44 10.00 2.57 8.93 2.11

Later parenting variablesChild Abuse Potential 8.02 4.00 9.02 3.51 10.31 2.34Maternal Interactions 29.17 6.90 25.71 6.32 24.67 5.94

Later MIS subscalesResponsiveness 17.30 4.22 15.63 4.10 14.33 4.19Verbal Stimulation 11.97 2.80 10.21 2.64 10.35 2.32

Note. A = insecure/avoidant; B = secure; C = insecure/resistant; D = disorganized.an = 32. bn = 14. cn = 14.

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ordered fashion, thereby offering evidence that models assuming an ordi-nal dependent variable were appropriate for these data.

Both models containing the early parenting predictors and the laterparenting variables predicted 5-year attachment category, χ2(3, N = 78) =10.05 and χ2(2, N = 78) = 6.90, respectively, ps < .05. Of the early parentingvariables, only early maternal interactions uniquely predicted attachment,χ2(1, N = 78) = 4.75, p < .05; the odds ratio was .90 (95% confidence interval =.83 – .99). Of the later parenting variables, later quality of maternal interac-tions predicted attachment when entered as the sole independent variable,χ2(1, N = 78) = 5.94, p < .05, with an odds ratio of .92 (95% confidence interval= .86– .98).However,neither laterabusepotentialnor latermaternal interac-tions predicted 5-year attachment when entered simultaneously.

To determine whether either early or later maternal interactional styleor both were uniquely related to 5-year attachment, multinomial logisticregression was used with these variables entered simultaneously. Whenthe quality of later maternal interactions was held constant, quality ofearly maternal interactions still predicted attachment security, χ2(1, N =78) = 5.97, p < .05, with an odds ratio of .90 (95% confidence interval = .83– .98). In contrast, when early maternal interactions were controlled, latermaternal interactions failed to predict 5-year attachment. In conjunction,these results suggest that the quality of parenting during the 1st yearof life may have unique and persistent effects on attachment duringchildhood.

Multinomial logistic regression was also used to determine if respon-siveness and verbal stimulation components of maternal interactionstyle — early and later in development — were uniquely related to5-year attachment security. Although an equation including later re-sponsiveness and later verbal stimulation predicted 5-year attachment,χ2(2, N = 78) = 6.62, p < .05, neither variable uniquely predicted 5-yearattachment, indicating that the relations between later responsivenessand verbal stimulation and 5-year attachment were accounted for bytheir shared variance. In contrast, early responsiveness predicted 5-yearattachment when later responsiveness was held constant, χ2(1, N = 78) =5.27, p < .05, with an odds ratio of .86 (95% confidence interval = .76 –.98); similarly when later verbal stimulation was controlled, early ver-bal stimulation predicted 5-year attachment, χ2(1, N = 78) = 3.72, p < .05,with an odds ratio of .91 (95% confidence interval = .83 – .99). In short,components of early maternal interaction quality in adolescents pre-dicted 5-year attachment independent of the later components of thequality of maternal interactions. In contrast, the relations between laterverbal stimulation and later responsiveness on attachment dependedon similar variables during infancy.

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DISCUSSION

In this study we examined the distribution of attachment at 1 and 5 years inchildren of adolescent mothers and attachment stability. We focused onpredicting attachment and its stability from observed parenting, cognitivereadiness for the parenting role, and child abuse potential, with the goal ofdetermining when parenting during infancy and early childhood had thegreatest impact on attachment security. At 1 year of age, strikingly highlevels of disorganized attachment (45%) were observed, and the incidenceof secure attachment was unusually low (31%). The rate of secure attach-ment during infancy was substantially lower than studies using mid-dle-class, low-risk populations (Ainsworth et al., 1978; NICHD Early ChildCare Network, 2001), and the high percentage of disorganized attachmentwas approximately 3 times the rate found in a meta-analysis of low-risksamples (van IJzendoorn et al., 1999).

Although the distribution of attachment in our project was “atypical”when compared with studies of children with adult mothers, the highlevels of insecure attachment, especially disorganized attachment, areconsistent with other studies of adolescent mothers and their infants.Rates of insecure attachment in adolescent mother – child dyads are of-ten reported to be over 50%, with a large percentage disorganized(Broussard, 1995; Spieker & Bensley, 1994; Ward & Carlson, 1995). At 5years of age, rates of secure and disorganized attachment in our projectmore closely approximated results found in other studies of attachmentwith children of adolescent mothers: Secure attachment increased to 41%,whereas disorganized attachment decreased to 18%. We turn now to pos-sible explanations for the high rates of insecure attachment in infantswith teenage mothers.

Adolescent mothers, as compared to adult mothers, are generally un-prepared to assume their parenting roles because of a lack of knowledgeabout infant and child development, a tendency toward endorsing harshor punitive parenting styles, and problematic parenting attitudes such asrole reversal (Sommer et al., 1993). According to Whitman et al. (2001), ateen mother’s lack of cognitive and emotional preparedness for parentingplaces her child at risk for a variety of developmental problems, includingorganized insecure and disorganized attachment. The readiness of an ado-lescent mother to parent depends on her formal education and informaleducation gained from life experiences as well as her cognitive ability toassimilate and utilize both types of information within an organizedparenting schema (Miller, Miceli, Whitman, & Borkowski, 1996). More pre-cisely, adolescent mothers are not as aware of important developmentalmilestones as adult mothers nor as prepared to provide everyday care for


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their infants; both factors can lead to less responsive parenting during in-fancy (Sommer et al., 2000).

Living with her own mother after giving birth can also affect a teenmother’s parenting skills, increasing the likelihood of continuing in heradolescent roles in terms of daily activities (e.g., completing school) as wellas maintaining a conflicted relationship with her mother, thus increasingthe probability of less skillful interactions with her infant (Spieker &Bensley, 1994). Cognitive unpreparedness for assuming the parenting rolecombined with poor parenting practices during infancy can result in majordevelopmental problems, including insecure attachment (Spieker &Bensley, 1994; Ward & Carlson, 1995; Whitman et al., 2001).

With respect to the stability of attachment, only 41% of the children inour sample remained in the same classification at 1 and 5 years of age. Sim-ilar shifts in attachment patterns have been associated with changes infamily relationships, parental job loss, poverty, spousal separations, shiftsin caregiving arrangements, and the birth of a sibling (Egeland & Farber,1984; Teti, Gelfand, Messinger, & Isabella, 1995; Vaughn, Egeland, Sroufe,& Waters, 1979; Vondra et al., 1999). Changes in family dynamics are morecommon in disadvantaged or high-risk populations and are especiallywidespread among families headed by adolescent mothers (Barnett,Ganiban, & Cicchetti, 1999; Whitman et al., 2001), influencing the quality oftheir early parenting practices (Belsky, 1997; Cowan, 1997; DeWolff & vanIJzendoorn, 1997), contributing to insecure attachment during infancy, andpromoting shifts in attachment security across time (Spieker & Bensley,1994; Spieker & Booth, 1988; Ward & Carlson, 1995).

Amongst this sample, in which instability appeared to be the norm, a setof variables that define cognitive readiness for parenting (maternal knowl-edge about infant and child development, attitudes and values related toparenting, and beliefs about appropriate disciplinary practices) predictedboth parenting behaviors and attachment security during infancy.Bivariate relations between cognitive readiness and maternal interactions,as well as cognitive readiness and 1-year attachment have been reported inthe literature (Sommer et al., 1993; Whitman et al., 2001). By examiningthese two predictor variables simultaneously, results of this study revealedthat cognitive readiness to parent had a direct effect on children’s attach-ment during infancy, not merely an indirect effect through observedparenting behaviors.

Although observed quality of parenting during infancy was associatedwith concurrent attachment, this relation failed to reach significance withthe addition of cognitive readiness to parent as an explanatory variable.The construct of cognitive readiness for parenting captures a broad rangeof knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about parenting and is perhaps a more

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valid representation of early parenting practices than are time-restrictive,laboratory based observational measures. Additionally, prenatal cognitivereadiness accounted for nearly 20% of the variance of observed parentingbehaviors during infancy. Thus, it appears that parenting behaviors duringinfancy are related to attachment security through their shared variancewith cognitive readiness to parent.

A different pattern emerged when examining the predictors of attach-ment at age 5, with cognitive readiness predicting 1-year attachment butfailing to predict later attachment. Instead, observational measures of thequality of parenting during infancy related to attachment during earlychildhood, over and above concurrent measures of maternal responsive-ness. Recent studies have found similar results, reporting that early re-sponsiveness predicted social development at 30 months of age and intoadolescence, regardless of the concurrent degree of responsiveness (Lan-dry et al., 2001; Wakschlag & Hans, 1999). These findings, along with thisstudy, corroborate Ainsworth and colleagues’ (1978) assertion thatparenting during infancy provides the foundation that allows a child tofeel secure and to develop a basic trust of their caregivers.

Although some research with low-risk samples has suggested that con-current parenting is a better predictor of attachment security than earlyparenting (Kochanska, 1998), this study lends support to the primacy ofparenting during the 1st year of life in laying a foundation for later chil-dren’s attachment security, at least in adolescent mother – child dyadswhere less consistent and sensitive parenting may characterize early child-hood development. When home environments are particularly chaoticand dysfunctional, which is often the case among families headed by ado-lescent mothers (Barnett et al., 1999; Whitman et al., 2001), the quality ofparenting suffers (Belsky, 1997; Cowan, 1997; DeWolff & van IJzendoorn,1997). Thus, a responsive and sensitive home environment during infancymay be particularly important for children who are likely to experiencedisruption and chaos throughout their childhood.

The two components of maternal interactional quality — responsive-ness and verbal encouragement – stimulation — were differentially relatedto attachment stability, depending on the stage of development. Maternalresponsiveness was related to whether children were securely or inse-curely attached; however, high levels of responsiveness failed to predictwhether an initially insecure child became securely attached at age 5. It ap-peared that responsive parenting during infancy was associated with theformation of secure attachment bonds, whereas continued responsivenessduring early childhood was related to the maintenance of those bonds.Landry et al. (2001) found similar results when analyzing the contributionof responsiveness to children’s development: Responsive parenting dur-


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ing both infancy and early childhood was associated with the maintenanceof optimal cognitive and social development. Similarly, the NICHD EarlyChild Care study (2001) found that lower levels of sensitivity during child-hood, at 24 to 36 months, were associated with changes from secure to inse-cure attachments, whereas high sensitivity was associated with changestoward secure attachment.

Children in our project who were insecure at 1 year of age but becamesecurely attached at 5, had mothers who were more verbally stimulatingduring early childhood than children who remained insecure. Researchhas documented the connection between verbal encouragement–stimu-lation and children’s joint attention, cognitive skills, language develop-ment, and attachment security (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997; Flom &Pick, 2003; Keown, Woodward, & Field, 2001; Smith, Landry, & Swank,2000). None, however, has examined the relations between verbal encour-agement – stimulation and attachment stability. Although higher levels ofresponsiveness were associated with the maintenance of secure attach-ment, verbal stimulation was the component of parenting most importantin predicting shifts from insecure to secure. Providing verbal stimulationand being more encouraging in early childhood seemed to be a correctivemechanism against some of the factors that produced insecure attachmentduring infancy.

As children become more verbal in early childhood, it is reasonable toassume that their ability to sustain joint attention and the extent of theirlanguage development would influence their interactions with others, in-cluding primary caregivers. Our results suggest that during this period ofrapid learning and change, motivating young children in an encouragingand appropriate way to learn and explore their environments becomes animportant component, along with parental responsiveness, of positivemother – child interactions

Adolescent mothers often live with their own parents after giving birthto their first children; thus, it was often difficult to determine the primarycaregiver and, hence, the logical attachment figure. Although there was alarge number or children who were disorganized at 1 year, some may haveformed a secure attachment to another primary caregiver, such as theirgrandmothers. Future research needs to examine multiple attachment re-lationships, including those between adolescent mothers and their chil-dren as well as the relationships between children and other members inthe household who may serve, often for relatively brief periods, as primarycaregivers. A secure attachment to the grandmother or another householdmember might buffer the long-term developmental effects of disorganizedmaternal attachment.

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A limitation of this study is the relatively small number of mother –child dyads included. Because this is a particularly high-risk, mobile popu-lation, only half of the participants in the larger study had data availablefrom the third trimester of pregnancy through the children’s 5th year. Al-though the smaller subsample did not differ from the remainder of the par-ticipants on major demographic variables, longitudinal research usinglarger adolescent samples is clearly needed.

This study was restricted to a low SES sample of adolescent motherswho were at high risk for poor parenting and children at high risk for a va-riety of developmental delays (Whitman et al., 2001); thus, our results ap-ply primarily to this population. Because of the unique and shifting envi-ronments of many adolescent mothers (i.e., living with their own parentsduring the initial 6 months of their child’s life but moving out shortly af-ter), future research should determine whether similar relations hold forother high-risk samples of mothers who live independently or with part-ners or friends. Examples of adult populations that may have similar pat-terns of relations to those found in this study would be mothers living inpoverty or who are cognitively unprepared for the parenting role. The ob-served differential effects of specific parenting behaviors, such as respon-siveness and verbal encouragement, on both early and later attachment se-curity may be unique to the life experiences of teenage mothers and theirchildren or common to low-risk and other high-risk mothers.

AFFILATIONS AND ADDRESSES

Julie J. Lounds, University of Notre Dame; John G. Borkowski, Univer-sity of Notre Dame; Thomas L. Whitman, University of Notre Dame; ScottE. Maxwell, University of Notre Dame; Keri Weed, University of SouthCarolina–Aiken. Julie Lounds is now at the Waisman Center, Universityof Wisconsin–Madison, 1500 Highland Ave., Madison WI 53705. E-mail:[email protected].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by NICHD grant HD 26456. The first authorwas a predoctoral trainee on NICHD training grant HD07184. VirginiaColin, who scored the attachment videotapes, was trained by MaryAinsworth for the 1-year coding and Bob Marvin for the 5-year coding. Weare grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlierversion of this article.


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Ainsworth, M., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Attachment: A psychological study of theStrange Situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Ainsworth, M., & Wittig, B. (1969). Attachment and exploratory behavior of one-year-olds ina Strange Situation. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), Determinants of infant behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 129–173).London: Netheum.

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APPENDIX

Parenting Dimensions in the Maternal Interaction Scale (MIS)

1. Interactional Orientation: The continuum ranges from mother andchild not interacting with one another at all (1) to occasionally inter-acting, to frequently interacting (physically and verbally; 6).

2. Control: refers to the directionality of interaction. On one extreme,the mother or child controls all interactions (1). On the other ex-treme, both parties participate in the interaction about equally (6).In the middle of the continuum both parties participate in the inter-action, however, one party has greater control.


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3. Attention: The continuum ranges from the mother not paying atten-tion to the child at all (1), to paying continuous attention (6). Atten-tion involves looking at but not necessarily interacting with thechild. If maternal interactions occur, attention is, by definition, be-ing provided.

4. Flexibility: Mother rigidly perseveres in one activity (one mode ofpresentation) and does not change or prompt appropriately (suchas when the child has gained mastery or continuously fails; 1). Atthe other end of the continuum, the mother adjusts as necessary anddoes so appropriately (6).

5. Verbal Exchanges: Refers to mother’s conversation with the child ex-cluding instructional prompts. At one end, the mother does not talkwith the child at all (1); on the other end the mother continuouslytalks to the child (6). This category refers to dialogue about objectsor activities as well as general conversation.

6. Positiveness: On one end of the continuum the mother frequentlygrimaces, criticizes, hits, teases, pokes, and makes demands of thechild in an impatient fashion (1). On the other end of the continuum,the mother frequently smiles, hugs, and praises the child (6).

7. Affectional Match: One end of the continuum is when emotional syn-chrony occurs between the mother and child; the mother is able tosoothe and handle distress and the mother is happy when the childis happy (6). On the other end, the mother inappropriately matchesthe child’s affect (e.g., responds to child’s smile with a grimace) anddoes not react to or read the child’s distress (1). The manner inwhich the mother responds to her child is what is important.

8. Rate of Stimulation: On one end of the continuum the mother un-der-stimulates the child or bombards the child with repeated andintense prompts (demands; 1); on the other end the mother’s rate ofstimulation is appropriate to the child’s state (6). This scale ad-dresses the question of whether or not the mother is sensitive to thechild’s state and adjusts prompting accordingly.

9. Appropriate Direction: On one end of the continuum, the mother pro-vides a variety of prompts, in a flexible fashion, that are necessary todirect the child’s performance (6); on the other, she provides mini-mal, rigid, or inappropriate direction to the child (1).

10. Appropriate Motivation: This continuum ranges from supportive,enthusiastic encouragement of the child’s performance (6) or, atthe negative end, the mother provides minimal or inappropriateencouragement (1).

11. Quality of Mothering: An estimated global rating of the overall qual-ity of interactional skills.

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adolescent parenting and attachment during infancy and early childhood

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