Parents Attachment Style Essay, Research Paper

In this paper, I will summarize the article I read, The Association Between Parental Reports of Attachment Style and Family Dynamics, and Offspring’s Reports of Adult Attachment Style. In the summary, section I will include the purpose of this study, the descriptions of the subjects involved, study design, and my key findings. In section II, I will reflect on one finding that I have explained in section I.

Section I

This research assessed by Dr. Mikulincer and Dr. Florian was, “to find the association between parents’ reports of attachment styles and their perceptions of family environment, on the one hand, and offspring’s reports of adult attachment styles, on the other” (Mukulincer and Florian, 1999). The study included, “sample of 98 undergraduate psychology students at Bar-Ilan University (58 women 40 men, ranging in age from 18 to 32, median=21)” (Mikulincer and Florian, 1999). All of the participants were single. Their fathers and mothers, who all have lived together in intact families, also took part in questionnaires.

The study design was that they used various ways of questioning. They first brought the student subjects in a group of 10 to 15 to the laboratory. There, they participated in figuring out their attachment styles. This showed the different attachment styles towards their mother and/or father. Then they were given a sealed envelope to give to their parents. Inside, were questionnaires that the parents had to fill out alone and return upon completion. Then, the students and their parents received an attachment style scale to fill out which asked questions of their typical style of relating to significant others. In this questionnaire, were three dependent variables. They included security, avoidant, and ambivalent attachment. The higher the scores, the higher the fathers’ and mothers’ reports of solidarity and adaptability toward their children appeared.

The key findings were the different correlation between the offspring and the parents. For example, the offspring’s secure attachment and avoidant attachment were significantly associated with the mother’s. Another finding was the gender differences in attachment. The men’s secure attachment was not associated with any parental attachment score, women’s secure attachment with their mother was. These findings tell us that the men significantly do not have security attachment with their parents.

Section II

I feel that the findings from this study can not be applied to most parents. I think, while this study showed the differences in the attachment level by gender, this could not be correlated because there were only limited amount of subjects. I also feel that the subjects used can be stereotyped compared to the whole world. The doctors did not find variety is social class. They found 98 students that went to the same school, majoring in the same field, and narrowed their subjects to what I can not say, can be used to work with all parents. No, I do not think the subject pool matches the client pool for the same reasons above. I think that the only other research that this study could possibly match with another is if the researchers used same subjects as Mikulincer and Florian did. I think that the way this finding can be used for only the subjects involved in the research. I feel that if the subjects were selected randomly, the outcome would have been altered.