Parenting and Attachment

This chapter examines parenting from the perspectives of the adult Attachment Interview and attachment parenting, some of the many advances in the process-oriented study of parenting and emotional security from a marital and family-wide perspective in the context of Emotional Security Theory. It focuses on process-oriented models for emotional security constructs derived from attachment theory and addresses parenting from a marital and family context, and in the context of community. Family-process models of the impact of parental drinking on children’s emotional security and adjustment have also received empirical support. Emotional security has also emerged as a key element of complex chains of family processes related to child adjustment. The chapter explains some of the issues and questions that have guided longitudinal and process-oriented research and the findings that have emerged, based on multiple methodologies, including short- and long-term longitudinal tests.