Antecedents of Attachment Disorganization across the First Year: Interactions among Child and Parent Variables

Disorganized attachmentis seen as reflecting an infant’s lack of strategyfor coping with the stress of the Strange Situation procedure (SSP; Ainsworth et al., 1978) The identification of disorganized attachment by Main and Solomon (1986) generated a large body of research into its antecedents and consequences. Despite these advances, however, 1)few studies have employed a prospective longitudinal designto clarify antecedents of disorganization, and 2)most research has focused on predicting disorganization from single risk factors, rarely investigating possible interactions among child and parent or environmental variables. The current study investigated the development of disorganized attachment across the first year from a prospective longitudinal perspectivefrom 3 –13 months. A primary goal was to employ a transactional modelto predict disorganization at the end of the first year, with a focus on interactions among a variety of child (gender, stressful child characteristics) and parent variables (parenting stress, maternal behaviour, child care)