Chapter Two: Literature Review

CHAPTER II

Literature Review

Overview of Literature Reviewed

Although it has of late become unfashionable to believe parenting skills and parental behavior may influence the development of emotional and behavioral disorders in children, current research on attachment shows a shift in parenting practices is needed to combat further intergenerational transmission of attachment disorders. Described as a "time bomb" by Levy and Orleans (1998), the children who fail to develop secure attachment to protective and loving caregivers will eventually become parents themselves. In order to combat the impending explosion of attachment disorders a different set of skills must be taught to the next generation of parents.
The recognition of the problem of attachment disorders is very new to the field of education. Discussions of parenting education courses specifically designed to promote secure attachment relationships and to prevent these disorders have not yet appeared in the literature. Therefore, the literature reviewed in this thesis has been selected from a variety of fields. Child development, medical, mental health, and anthropological research will be combined with a limited number of popular writings in an effort to present a cohesive image of both the problem and the proposed remedy.

Attachment Theory and Research

Longitudinal research in attachment (e.g., Carlson, 1998; Sroufe, 2000a) at the University of Minnesota reveals that early childhood security of attachment has farther reaching implications than infant temperament or later family or peer relationships. Throughout childhood and adolescence, it is the attachment history of children which best predicts success in school, or psychopathology and conduct problems (Sroufe, 2000a). In a striking example the researchers were able to predict high school dropouts with 77% accuracy, using only measures of early childhood support and attachment assessments at age three. Further, it has recently been found that the emotional closeness and level of hostility within romantic relationships in early adulthood is also predicted by early childhood attachment histories (Sroufe, 2000a). Nevertheless, it is important to note that attachment relationships are dynamic in nature. Although they build continuously upon prior attachment history, they can be influenced for the better or the worse by changes in support and life circumstances (Bowlby, 1988). However, since the majority of children experience a continuity in the quality of care they receive throughout childhood, their patterns of attachment reflect that continuity.

Attachment Patterns

Depending on which of the attachment classificatory systems are used, attachment relationship patterns have been defined in various ways. The basic division was of secure, anxious-resistant/ambivalent, or anxious-avoidant attachment relationships; sometimes this is actually broken down into classification of the attachment relationship as either secure or insecure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). The distribution of attachment patterns in the pre-1985 literature was 14% anxious-resistant/ambivalent, 20% anxious-avoidant, and 65% secure attachments (Lyons-Ruth, 1996). From 1985 until the present, researchers began to concentrate their investigations on high-risk families. As they did so an additional pattern emerged. The category of disorganized or disoriented attachment was developed when it was found that the behavior of some infants would not fit into the previously described patterns. These babies acted in unpredictable ways; they did not seem to have any consistent strategy for dealing with stress and attachment. The classification systems began to recognize the levels as secure, anxious-avoidant, anxious-resistant/ambivalent, or disorganized (Carlson, 1998; Sroufe, 2000b). Attachment relationships in literature using all four categories was found to be distributed as follows: 15% disorganized, 23% anxious-avoidant, 8% anxious-ambivalent, and 55% secure. Research and literature in this field uses the different labels depending on the date and scope of the studies. Although most post-1985 research and literature uses the four part system of classification which includes disorganized attachment, some recent research describes children who lacked any consistent caregiver, and therefore any opportunity to have selective attachments, as an additional category of "nonattached" children (Levy & Orlans, 1998).

Benefits of Secure Attachment

Security of attachment reflects the confidence children have in the responsiveness of their relationships with their caregivers. Children can never be too securely attached to their caregiver (Sroufe, 2000a). Consistently, it is the children with secure attachment relationships who are found to take better advantage of their opportunities in life, are better liked by their peers, have superior leadership and social skills, and are more confident than other children (Levy & Orlans, 1998; Sroufe, 2000a).
In a study of preschool-aged children by John Kesner (1998), it was found that securely attached children had better conflict management skills than their insecurely attached peers. This is notable because children who lack the social skills necessary to manage conflict often resort to aggressive behavior. Risk factors of single parent status, low socioeconomic status, and gender were not significant predictors -- neither was security of relationship to the teacher. The children's attachment relationships to their parents was the sole predictor of their conflict management skills. Within the Minnesota Preschool Project, Alan Sroufe (1983) reports preschool children who had been rated securely attached as infants had several advantages over anxiously attached children. The secure children were more ego-resilient, had higher self-esteem, and had relationships with their teachers which reflected more autonomy and less dependence than their insecure peers. Secure children, those who had had their emotional needs met by a responsive adult, were affectively more positive, less aggressive, tantrumy, or angry with others, and more compliant within a classroom setting.
The benefits of secure attachment do not stop in preschool. Children and teens with secure attachment histories excel with regards to social and emotional health, leadership skills, morality and prosocial behavior, self-reliance and self-control, and resiliency as appropriate at each stage of development. Also, parenting behaviors are transmitted intergenerationally (Egeland & Erickson, 1999; Levy & Orlans, 1998) and securely attached children grow into parents who are highly responsive and sensitive to their own children. In study by Cowan, Cowan, Cohn, and Pearson (1996), it was noted that parental attachment histories and their level of understanding of their attachment histories correlated highly with both marital interactions and parenting styles. The researchers found that father's attachment history predicted their child's externalizing behavior while mother's attachment history predicted the child's internalizing behaviors.

Repercussions of Insecure Attachment

Children with anxious-ambivalent/resistant, anxious-avoidant, and disorganized attachment relationships are all headed down a path towards problems with their own relationships as children and adults (Levy & Orlans, 1998). Insecure attachment manifests in attachment behaviors which are functional infantile coping mechanisms, but are no longer appropriate when the baby grows up. The inner working models formed by these early experiences and behaviors color the individual's view of and interactions with the world around them (Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, & Egeland, 1999). This results in anxious children being significantly more dependent, with anxious-avoidant children found to be ëthe worst friends', devious and manipulative and taking pleasure in other's distress, and anxious-ambivalent children found to be narcissistic and socially incompetent (Sroufe, 2000a). Boys labeled as avoidant were the most aggressive and most likely to be conduct disordered, and the avoidant girls most likely to turn the aggressiveness inward and become depressed. Anxiously attached children and adolescents are more emotionally and behaviorally troubled and less resilient than their secure peers (Levy & Orlans, 1998). Conduct problems in adolescence are predicted by both avoidant and disorganized attachment status in early childhood. There is also a high correlation between psychopathology at age 17.5 and disorganized early attachment (Sroufe, 2000a). In a review of studies of early aggression and attachment relationships, Karen Lyons-Ruth (1996) of Harvard Medical School noted that disorganized attachment behaviors are forerunners of coercive childhood behavior. She also found that insecure and disorganized attachment relationships are a contributor to conduct disorders and oppositional defiant disorder in children.

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