engleski

Attachment Styles of Parents of Adolescents and Their Parenting Behavior

Attachment Styles of Parents of Adolescents and Their Parenting Behavior The parent-child relationship and quality of parenting behavior have proven to be the most influential determinants of the child’ s development. While great effort has been expended studying the parenting behavior and consequences of parenting, much less attention has been devoted to studying determinants of parenting behavior. Along with the child characteristics, and contextual sources of stress and support, parenting is believed to be influenced by characteristics of the individual that are product of a person’ s developmental history (Belsky, 1984). Research indicate that effective parenting is associated with personal maturity and psychological well-being that may be traced back to the experiences parents in their childhood. Abidin (1992) hypothesizes that each parent has an internal working model of self as a parent that is created out of individual attachment history. That model includes the person’ s goals for herself or himself and her or his internalized expectations of others. Through it parent’ s apprise demands of their parental role, and that appraisal produces level of stress that influence parenting behavior. The few existing studies that have explored the relation between parental attachment styles and parenting suggest that parental attachment insecurity is associated with ambivalence about having children and with more negative models of parenthood and parent-child relationships (Rholes et al., 1995, 1997). The aim of the present study was to investigate how parental self-reported attachment style towards their own father and mother is associated with their adult attachment style and with their parenting behavior. Participants were 812 pairs of parents and their school-age children (grades 5th to 8th) from different regions of Croatia. Parent attachment style was assessed by the mean of Adult Attachment Styles self-selection measure (Hazan & Shaver, 1987) that categorizes persons as having secure, avoidant or ambivalent attachment in relationship with others. Similar self-reported measure of categorization of relationships of parents with their father and mother was used. Parenting behavior was self-assessed as well as assessed by the child by the mean of Croatian Parental Behavior Questionnaire (Keresteš & Kuterovac Jagodić, 2005) that measures parental acceptance and rejection, positive and negative discipline, monitoring and permissiveness. The paper discusses the association between parent’ s attachment history and different dimensions of parenting as well as the mediating role of parental current adult attachment style.

attachment; parenting; adolescents

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