It should be no surprise that a mother shapes her child significantly even before the child is born. A mother also performs a variety of responsibilities in a child’s development since she serves as a teacher for the child’s social-emotional, physical, cognitive, and independent growth. And a child looks to their mother for leadership, wisdom, and support at all times. You thereby play a crucial part in their lives.
In addition, a child’s mother is their initial point of emotional connection and attachment because she is their primary caregiver during their earliest days, weeks, and months. As a result, newborns will associate their first emotions with their mothers. However, a mother’s effect on her child may not just be restricted to the positive traits she possesses. A mother’s difficulty or problems may affect her child as well.
The association between maternal interpersonal issues and teenage attachment insecurity was explored in a study published in the journal Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation. Important findings from the study will contribute to investigating intergenerational risk processes and developing therapies targeted at enhancing parent-child relationships and attachment.
The stability of parent-child attachment continues to be crucial throughout adolescence, regarded as the second most essential developmental stage after infancy and early childhood. The interpersonal circumplex (IPC), a useful tool for describing interpersonal issues and has been demonstrated to be associated with maladaptive adult attachment in close/romantic relationships, has not been the subject of studies on links with offspring attachment.
By examining the connection between maternal personal conflicts and adolescent attachment issues and whether mothers’ recalled bonding with their own caregivers partially explained this connection, the study conducted by researchers from the University of Houston seeks to close this gap in the literature.
The researchers spoke with 351 teenagers who were inpatients for mental health issues (average age: 15, 64% female) as well as their biological mothers. Participants were questioned about unpleasant interpersonal activities that they “do too much of” or “find difficult to accomplish” (example: “It is difficult for me to feel close to other people”) (e.g., “I try to please other people too much”). Children were evaluated on their capacity to reflect on and coherently express their attachment experiences and how these experiences affected them.
The study also examined whether mothers remembered developing close bonds with their own moms to explain their relationship with their kids, and they discovered this was accurate. The results imply that mothers of adolescents with insecure attachments remembered their mothers’ caregiving as less intense.
Additionally, they confirmed that adolescents would either downplay the importance of attachment with their mothers or display an enraged preoccupation with that relationship. This was due to maternal interpersonal problems, which were linked to higher levels of insecure attachment in adolescent offspring.
The researchers went on to say that parents’ memories of their interactions with their caregivers were probably influenced by how well they interacted with others, which may affect the bond that they form with their kids.
Therefore, it may be especially important to stop the intergenerational transmission of risk through attachment- or mentalization-based interventions that consider how mothers recollect their experiences with their caregivers. To better understand the mechanisms underlying familial risk and develop interventions to enhance parent-child relationships and attachment, researchers may also want to consider interpersonal circumplex (IPC) measures, and IPC-informed psychotherapy approaches.
Kerr, S., Penner, F., Ilagan, G., Choi-Kain, L., & Sharp, C. (2022). Maternal interpersonal problems and attachment security in adolescent offspring. Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-022-00188-8
