Conference Agenda

Parent-child attachment serves as a crucial context through which children learn about, experience, and regulate emotions (e.g., Brumariu, 2015; Cassidy, 1994; Cooke et al., 2019). While previous studies show attachment patterns relate to differences in children’s global/trait-like experiences of emotions (Cooke, 2019), less is known about fluctuation or continuity in their emotional experiences. Because context-appropriate emotion generation/change is a key correlate of adjustment (Coifman et al., 2016), we evaluated the relation between parent-child attachment, children’s daily emotions, school, and peer experiences using dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM). Children, N = 101 M(SD) age = 10.38 (0.98), 50 girls, completed the Story Stem Interview (Granot & Mayseless, 2001; Kerns et al., 2011) and reported on their positive and negative emotions before school, after school, and in the evening, and on positive and negative school and peer events after school over five school days. Children’s attachment representations were not related to fluctuation (i.e., random variance) in their emotions, nor the continuity of their emotions from one assessment to the next (i.e., autoregressive effects). Children’s greater attachment avoidance was associated with lower typical levels of positive and negative emotions (i.e., intercepts), and greater ambivalence was associated with higher typical levels of positive and negative emotions. While nonsignificant, effect sizes were medium for the negative relation between security and negative school events, and the positive association of ambivalence and disorganization with negative school events. Greater attachment avoidance was associated with fewer positive peer events, and greater ambivalence was associated with greater positive peer events. Greater attachment disorganization was associated with greater negative peer events. Overall, results extend the literature on how attachment relates to individual differences in children’s daily experiences of positive and negative emotions and the quality of their academic and interpersonal experiences.

Background: The behavioural attunement between an adolescent seeking support and parents providing support in response to everyday stressors reflects core attachment processes and is associated with the development of emotion regulation and family-level resilience (Bowlby, 1969; Feldman, 2020; Masten, 2018). Although extensive observational research has examined attachment and parenting behaviours during dyadic parent-child interactions, this work has predominantly focused on mothers and younger children. Some studies have examined dyadic parent-adolescent interactions, yet no observational instruments currently assess attachment-related behaviours within triadic mother-father-child interactions. This gap is notable given that adolescents’ emotion regulation strategies emerge within family systems (Masten, 2018), in which fathers play a distinct and complementary role (Feldman, 2023).

Aim: This study describes and validates a newly developed observational coding instrument capturing early adolescents’ support-seeking and support-accepting behaviours, as well as mothers’ and fathers’ support provision and co-parenting behaviours during a triadic family interaction. We examine (1) frequencies of and associations between adolescents’ attachment behaviours, maternal and paternal support provision, and co-parenting behaviours, and (2) associations between observed behaviours and individual differences in adolescents’ and parents’ attachment security. We hypothesize that more securely attached family members will display more regulated and supportive interpersonal emotion regulation than more insecurely attached family members.

Methods: Sixty-one family triads, including an early adolescent (10-14 years) and biological parents, participated in a five-minute conflict discussion. Interactions were coded for adolescent support-seeking behaviours, each parent’s support provision and co-parenting behaviours, and adolescent’s responses to parental support. Secure base script knowledge, attachment anxiety and avoidance, supportive parenting, and dyadic coping were assessed using validated measures.

Discussion: By incorporating both parents and their co-parenting dynamics, this triadic observational approach enhances the ecological validity of attachment assessment and opens pathways for studying interpersonal emotion regulation in adolescence.

This study examined parental involving/role-reversing behavior, assessed via the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), and its associations with family boundary processes, parental functioning, and females’ psychosocial adjustment from adolescence into adulthood. The Involving scale captures the extent to which parents draw children into meeting their own emotional or relational needs, ranging from mild confusion or over-protectiveness to explicit expectations that the child regulates the parent’s emotions or serve as a companion or spousal substitute.

Participants were 120 adolescent girls and their parents followed longitudinally across three waves from late adolescence into adulthood. At Time 1, adolescents’ AAI interviews were coded for involving/role-reversing behavior. Multi-informant assessments of boundary disturbances (e.g., guilt induction, triangulation, psychological control), differentiation, and parental separation anxiety were collected at Times 1–2. Girls’ self-silencing, depressive symptoms, and identity outcomes were assessed at a later follow-up in adulthood (M= 32).

Higher parental involving scores were associated with greater boundary dissolution, lower differentiation across family members, and elevated parental distress and separation anxiety. Longitudinally, inferred parental involving behavior predicted increased self-silencing and higher depressive symptoms in daughters. Findings support a developmental cascade model in which parental emotional reliance on the child undermines autonomy development and heightens vulnerability to internalizing outcomes, particularly among girls socialized toward relational sensitivity and emotional responsibility.

The study demonstrates the utility of inferred childhood experiences in the AAI for identifying role-reversing dynamics and advances understanding of intergenerational pathways linking attachment representations, family boundary disturbances, and long-term psychosocial risk.

Parenthood regret—the feeling that the decision to have children was a mistake, often accompanied by profound dissatisfaction and frustration with the parental role—may deeply affect parent-child relationships, yet its attachment-related underpinnings remain underexplored. This study examined links between attachment, reflective functioning (RF), and parenthood regret among 165 cisgender, heterosexual Italian biological mothers (M = 39.00, SD = 10.40) of children aged 0–18 years. Mothers completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), coded for overall attachment state of mind, past attachment experiences, single indicators of states of mind, and RF. They also completed the Parenthood Regret Scale. Dismissing and unresolved mothers reported significantly higher regret than secureautonomous and preoccupied mothers. Unresolved abuse, but not loss, was significantly linked to elevated regret. Dimensional analyses of the AAI experience and state-of-mind scales indicated that maternal rejection and neglect, low paternal loving, idealization of the mother, and insistence on lack of memory correlated with higher parenthood regret. Mediation analyses revealed that greater AAI coherence of mind was associated with lower parenthood regret both directly and partly via higher RF. Clinically, findings highlight the need to differentiate attachment states of mind in interventions for regretful mothers— addressing trauma integration for unresolved cases, enhancing affect access for dismissing cases, and fostering mentalization across groups.