Attachment security has long been studied as a critical predictor of child adjustment and development. Most research supporting these findings has been conducted only on mothers, despite steady increases in fathers’ involvement in parenting across recent decades (McKelley & Rochlen, 2016). Even when fathers are included in attachment research, infant–father relationships are often analyzed independently from infant–mother relationships (Bretherton, 2010), which ignores the ecological structure of families and the interdependent nature of family relationships. Modern attachment theorists have proposed a network configuration model to explain attachment security (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018). In the model, a configuration is defined as groupings based on having secure or insecure attachment to mother and father, resulting in four possible configurations (secure both, insecure both, secure to only mother, secure to only father).
I analyzed attachment configurations in relation to infant cortisol reactivity (Kuo et al., 2019) and found some surprising results. Specifically, having a secure attachment to father and a simultaneous insecure attachment to mother was related to cortisol reactivity indicative of chronic stress that was not seen in the other attachment configurations.
Why would a secure attachment to father in the absence of a secure attachment to mother be stressful? Because increased parental sensitivity predicts infant’s secure attachment with both mothers and fathers (De Wolff & van Ijzendoorn, 1997; Lucassen et al., 2011), it is likely that mothers were insensitive and fathers were sensitive in this configuration. But what could be stressful about having a sensitive father? We looked to sample characteristics: mothers were primary caregivers and fathers were secondary caregivers, showing that mothers were far more available (i.e., accessible) to the infant than fathers were. Infants use primary caregivers as sources of safety and reassurance regardless of attachment security status whereas infants look to secondary caregivers as supporters of exploration and learning (Umemura et al., 2013). This sensitivity/availability paradox may underlie our surprising results from the secure-to-father and insecure-to-mother group.
The Early Career Grant in Developmental Psychology allowed me to explore some of these issues regarding the sensitivity and availability paradox in the secure attachment to father with a simultaneous insecure attachment to mother group. In our study, parents of infants wore GoPro cameras while both parents were at home and the infant was awake. Parents also completed questions about whether infant care was shared equally or if one person was more responsible than the other. When infants reached 12 months of age, each parent was invited to the lab to participate in the Strange Situation with their infant to assess attachment security. One month later, the other parent attended with their infant. Conducting the Strange Situation during the pandemic was additionally strange–parents wore masks and the stranger wore gloves, a mask, and a face shield. However, infants did not seem to mind the extra PPE on the experimenter or the parent. We plan to code the observational data in the upcoming year–stay tuned for the results.
References
Bretherton, I. (2010). Fathers in attachment theory and research: A review. Early Child Development and Care, 180(1-2), 9-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430903414661
De Wolff, M. S., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (1997). Sensitivity and Attachment: A Meta-Analysis on Parental Antecedents of Infant Attachment. Child Development, 68(4), 571-591. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb04218.x
Kuo, P. X., Saini, E. K., Tengelitsch, E., & Volling, B. L. (2019). Is one secure attachment enough? Infant cortisol reactivity and the security of infant-mother and infant-father attachments at the end of the first year. Attachment & Human Development, 21(5), 426-444. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1582595
Lucassen, N., Tharner, A., Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Volling, B. L., Verhulst, F. C., Lambregtse-Van den Berg, M. P., & Tiemeier, H. (2011). The association between paternal sensitivity and infant–father attachment security: A meta-analysis of three decades of research. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(6), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025855
McKelley, R. A., & Rochlen, A. B. (2016). Furthering fathering: What we know and what we need to know. In APA handbook of men and masculinities. (pp. 525-549). American Psychological Association.
Umemura, T., Jacobvitz, D., Messina, S., & Hazen, N. (2013). Do toddlers prefer the primary caregiver or the parent with whom they feel more secure? The role of toddler emotion. Infant Behavior and Development, 36(1), 102-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2012.10.003