Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:04:51.082Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Autonomy and relatedness in adolescent-family interactions as predictors of young adults' states of mind regarding attachment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2009

Joseph P. Allen  and
Stuart T. Hauser
Joseph P. Allen*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Stuart T. Hauser
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School
*
Department of Psychology, Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined the extent to which the diverging pathways taken by adolescents and their parents in establishing autonomy and relatedness in their interactions at age 14 served as stage-specific markers of underlying attachment processes that could help predict states of mind regarding attachment of the adolescents 11 years later as young adults. Adolescents in two-parent families (N=73) and their parents, originally selected from either a high school sample or a psychiatrically hospitalized sample, participated in a revealed differences family interaction task when adolescents were 14 years of age. At age 25, subjects were reinterviewed using the Adult Attachment Interview, which yielded ratings of specific states of mind and overall organization of models of attachment relationships. After accounting for the prior psychiatric history of the sample (which was highly related to attachment insecurity) and global indices of functioning in both adolescence and young adulthood, coherence/ security in adults' states of mind regarding attachment was predicted from maternal behaviors promoting adolescent autonomy and relatedness 11 years earlier. One indicator of adult preoccupation with attachment relationships, passivity of thought processes, was predicted from adolescents' autonomy-inhibiting behaviors, specifically from the presence of enmeshing behaviors and the absence of distancing behaviors. Results are interpreted as suggesting that establishing autonomy and relatedness with parents may be an attachment-related, developmental task for both normal and at-risk adolescents, and that serious psychopathology and difficulties establishing autonomy and relatedness in adolescence may represent two independent pathways to insecure attachment models in young adulthood.

Type
Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 8 , Issue 4: Developmental Pathways: Diversity in Process and Outcome , Fall 1996 , pp. 793 - 809
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., Bell, K. L., & O'Connor, T. G. (1994). Longitudinal assessment of autonomy and relatedness in adolescent-family interactions as predictors of adolescent ego development and self-esteem. Child Development, 65, 179–194.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., & Borman-Spurrell, E. (1996). Attachment insecurity and related sequelae of severe adolescent psychopathology: An eleven-year follow-up study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 254–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., Borman-Spurrell, E., & Worrell, C. M. (1990). The autonomy and relatedness coding system: A scoring manual. Unpublished manuscript. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (1987). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition—Revised: DSM-IIIR. Washington, DC: Author.Google Scholar
Benoit, D., & Parker, K. (1994). Stability and transmission of attachment across three generations. Child Development, 65, 1444–1456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss: Vol. 3: Loss, sadness and depression. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Carlson, E. A. (1989). Individual differences in quality of representational organization of attachment of high risk adolescent mothers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Cassidy, J., & Kobak, R. (1988). Avoidance and its relation to other defensive processes. In Belsky, J. & Nezworski, T. (Eds.), Clinical implications of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, D., Cummings, E. M., Greenberg, M. T., & Marvin, R. S. (1990). An organizational perspective on attachment beyond infancy. In Greenberg, M. T., Cicchetti, D. & Cummings, E. M. (Eds.), Attachment in the Preschool Years (pp. 3–49). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, D. V., & Sparrow, S. A. (1981). Developing criteria for establishing interrater reliability of specific items: Applications to assessment of adaptive behavior. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 86, 127–137.Google ScholarPubMed
Colby, A., & Kohlberg, L. (1987). The measuring of moral judgement. (Vol. 1). New York: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Collins, W. A. (1990). Parent-child relationships in the transition to adolescence: Continuity and change in interaction, affect, and cognition. In Montemayor, R., Adamas, G. R., & Gullotta, T. P. (Eds.), From childhood to adolescence: A transitional period? Advances in Adolescent Development, Volume 2 (pp. 85–106). Newbury Park: Sage.Google Scholar
Cowan, P. A., Cohn, D. A., Cowan, C. P., & Pearson, J. L. (1996). Parents' attachment histories and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors: Exploring family systems models of linkage. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 53–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crittenden, P. M. (1992). Quality of attachment in the preschool years. Development and Psychopathology, 4, 209–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowell, J. A., Feldman, S. S., & Ginsberg, N. (1988). Assessment of mother-child interaction in preschoolers with behavior problems. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 27 303–311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Derogatis, L. R. (1983). Description and bibliography for the SCL-90-R and other instruments of the Psychopathology Rating Scale Series. Unpublished manuscript, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.Google Scholar
Fonagy, P., Steele, H., & Steele, M. (1991). Maternal representations of attachment during pregnancy predict the organization of infant-mother attachment at one year of age. Child Development, 62, 891–905.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Moran, G., Steele, H., & Higgitt, A. (1993). Measuring the ghost in the nursery: An empirical study of the relation between parents' mental representations of childhood experiences and their infants' security of attachment. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 41, 957–989.Google Scholar
Frank, S., & Quinlan, D. M. (1976). Ego development and female delinquency: A cognitive-developmental approach. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85, 505–510.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1984). Attachment interview for adults. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Grotevant, H. D., & Cooper, C. R. (1985). Patterns of interaction in family relationships and the development of identity exploration in adolescence. Special Issue: Family development. Child Development, 56, 415–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauser, S. T. (1976). Loevinger's model and measure of ego development: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin, 83, 928–955.Google Scholar
Hauser, S. T., with Powers, S. I., & Noam, G. G. (1991). Adolescents and their families: Paths of ego development. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hauser, S. T., Powers, S. I., Noam, G. G., Jacobson, A. M., Weiss, B., & Follansbee, D. J. (1984). Familial contexts of adolescent ego development. Child Development, 55, 195–213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hill, J. P., & Holmbeck, G. N. (1986). Attachment and autonomy during adolescence. Annals of Child Development, 3, 145–189.Google Scholar
Hinde, R. A., & Dennis, A. (1986). Categorizing individuals: An alternative to linear analysis. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 9, 105–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollingshead, A. F. (1975). Four-factor index of social status. Working paper, Department of Sociology, Yale University.Google Scholar
Jones, E. E., Cumming, J. D., & Horowitz, M. J. (1988). Another look at the nonspecific hypothesis of therapeutic effectiveness. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 48–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, J., Reznick, J. S., & Gibbons, J. (1989). Inhibited and uninhibited types of children. Child Development, 60, 838–845.Google Scholar
Kobak, R. R., Cole, H., Ferenz-Gillies, R., Fleming, W., & Gamble, W. (1993). Attachment and emotion regulation during mother-teen problem-solving: A control theory analysis. Child Development, 64, 231–245.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kobak, R. R., & Sceery, A. (1988). Attachment in late adolescence: Working models, affect regulation and representations of self and others. Child Development, 59, 135–146.Google Scholar
Kobak, R. R., Sudler, N., & Gamble, W. (1991). Attachment and depressive symptoms during adolescence: A developmental pathways analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 3, 461–474.Google Scholar
Lewis, M., Feiring, C., McGuffog, C., & Jaskir, J. (1984). Predicting psychopathology in six-year-olds from early social relations. Child Development, 55, 123–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.Google Scholar
Loevinger, J. (1979). Construct validity of the ego development test. Applied Psychological Measurement, 3, 281–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loevinger, J. (1985). Revisions of the sentence completion test for ego development. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 420–427.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loevinger, J., Wessler, R. (1970). Measuring ego development, vol. 1: Construction and use of a sentence completion test. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.Google Scholar
Loevinger, J., Wessler, R., & Redmorc, C. (1970). Measuring ego development, vol. 2. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.Google Scholar
Main, M., & Goldwyn, R. (in press). Adult attachment rating and classification systems. In Main, M. (Ed.), A typology of human attachment organization assessed in discourse, drawings and interviews (working title). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growing Points in Attachment Theory and Research, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(66–104, Serial No. 209).Google Scholar
Matas, L., Arend, R. A., & Sroufe, L. A. (1978). Continuity of adaptation in the second year: The relationship between quality of attachment and later competence. Child Development, 49, 547–556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, D. (1987). Parent-adolescent separation: The construction of adulthood by late adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 23, 298–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphey, E. B., Silber, E., Coelho, G. V., Hamburg, D. A., & Greenberg, I. (1963). Development of autonomy and parent-child interaction in late adolescence. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 33, 643–652.Google Scholar
Pearson, J. L., Cohn, D. A., Cowan, P. A., & Cowan, C. P. (1994). Earned-and continuous-security in adult attachment: Relation to depressive symptomatology and parenting style. Development and Psychopathology, 6, 359–373.Google Scholar
Rosenstein, D. S. (1992). Attachment, personality and psychopathology in adolescence. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Rosznafsky, J. (1981). The relationship of level of ego development to Q-sort personality ratings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 99–120.Google Scholar
Schneider-Rosen, K. (1990). The development reorganization of attachment relationships. In Greenberg, M. T., Cicchetti, D., & Cummings, E. M. (Eds.), Attachment in the Preschool Years (pp. 185–220). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sroufe, L. A. (1983). Infant-caregiver attachment and patterns of adaptation in pre-school: The roots of maladaptation and competence. In Perlmutter, M. (Ed.), Minnesota symposium on child psychology (Vol. 16, pp. 41–81). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sroufe, L. A. (1985). Attachment classification from the perspective of infant-caregiver relationships and infant temperament. Child Development, 56, 1–14.Google Scholar
Sroufe, L. A., & Jacobvitz, D. (1989). Diverging pathways, developmental transformations, multiple etiologies and the problem of continuity in development. Human Development, 32, 196–203.Google Scholar
Steinberg, L. (1990). Interdependency in the family: Autonomy, conflict, and harmony in the parent-adolescent relationship. In Feldman, S. & Elliott, G. (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Strodtbeck, F. (1951). Husband-wife interaction over revealed differences. American Sociology Review, 16, 463–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tangney, J. P., Wagner, P., Gramzow, R. (1992). Proneness to shame, proneness to guilt, and psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 101, 469–478.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waters, E., Wippman, J., & Sroufe, L. A. (1979). Attachment, positive affect, and competence in the peer group: Two studies in construct validation. Child Development, 50, 821–829.Google Scholar