Major and Classification
Psychology
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Darby Saxbe
Department
Psychology
Research Gateway Project
“Attachment as a Predictor of Parenting Practices”
Project Abstract
This study examined whether expectant parents’ adult attachment style predicted their prenatal emotional attachment to their baby, their postpartum emotional attachment to their baby, and their parenting practices. We examined first time mothers and fathers separately. We hypothesized that parents with a more secure attachment style, with either less attachment-related anxiety or less attachment-related avoidance, would be more emotionally attached to their child both prenatally and postpartum. We also hypothesized that parents with a more secure attachment style, with either less attachment-related anxiety or less attachment-related avoidance, would be report a more attuned and less structured infant caregiving style. We conducted a longitudinal study using data collected from the USC HATCH study with 148 soon-to-be first-time parents. We used the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised by Fraley, Waller, and Brennan (2000) to measure adult attachment, the Maternal Antenatal Attachment Scale and Paternal Antenatal Attachment Scale by Condon (1993), the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale by Condon and Corkindale (1998), the Paternal Postnatal Attachment Scale by Condon, Corkindale, and Boyce (2008), and the Baby Care Questionnaire by Winstanley and Gattis (2013) to measure attuned and structured caregiving. We found that a mother’s avoidant attachment style predicted her report of more structured caregiving, and that a father’s avoidant attachment style predicted lower postpartum emotional attachment to his baby.