Chapter 19: The Multiple Facets of Attachment in Adolescence
Chapter organisation
- Advances in understanding facets of attachment in adolescence
- Normative development
- Individual differences
- Implications of multifaceted perspective on adolescent attachment
Normative development: attachment relationships with caregivers
- Seeking to establish emotional self-sufficiency, adolescents must often work not to need to turn to their
primary caregivers to meet attachment need
- Parents continue to be used as attachment figures, particularly under conditions of danger and separation
distress
- At the same time, adolescents seek to develop greater emotional self-sufficiency, struggling for
behavioural autonomy
- It can be difficult at times for a teen to fiercely oppose his or her parents’ control efforts while feeling
pulled by both habit and the attachment system to retain their shoulders to cry on
The attachment hierarchy
- Becomes more flexible and multidimensional → peers and romantic partners begin to enter the hierarchy
- Parents → adolescents will turn to under conditions of stress/severe illness (mothers being more likely
than fathers to remain at the top of the attachment)
- Peers/romantic partner → adolescents will turn to for peer related stressors, which can also be severe and
distressing,Nonetheless, not true that teens become more dismissing in general of attachment
Transformations in intrapsychic process (Cognitive/emotional capacities)
- Intrapsychic roots of attachment begin to grow, enriched by developing functional independence +
cognitive capacity
- Adolescents begin to construct a more integrated state of mind regarding attachment
- Displays stability over time
- Adolescents begin to:
- Integrate diverse attachment-relevant experiences (past/present, multiple caregivers, new
relationships)
- Reevaluate cognitions, memories, and affective reactions related to attachment.
- Epistemic space → cognitive and emotional freedom, allows persons to evaluate parents as attachment
figures more objectively
- Emotional/cognitive capacities drive state of mind:
- Emotional capacities → adolescent continues lifelong process of learning to self soothe and
regulate emotional reactions
- Cognitive capacities → development of formal operational reasoning allows adolescents to
contemplate abstract and counterfactual possibilities. Dramatic cognitive differentiation of self
and others allow teens to begin to establish a more consistent view of self. Capacity to de-idealise
parents—to see them in both positive and negative ways.
Transformations in Peer Relationships
- Interactions with peers have begun to take on many of the functions for a lifetime, provide:
- Sources of intimacy
- Feedback about social behavior, social influence, and information
- Attachment, sexual relationships, and lifelong partnerships
- When do peer relationships become attachment relationships?
- Attachment functioned due to value for humans as vulnerable humans to associate with others as a source
of safety
- Absence of positive social connections creates risk for illness, early death, obesity, cigarette smoking
- Zeifman & Hazan (2008) → WHOTO interview, which assesses the extent to which adolescents learn to
turn to peers to meet the various attachment functions outlined by Ainsworth
Chapter organisation
- Advances in understanding facets of attachment in adolescence
- Normative development
- Individual differences
- Implications of multifaceted perspective on adolescent attachment
Normative development: attachment relationships with caregivers
- Seeking to establish emotional self-sufficiency, adolescents must often work not to need to turn to their
primary caregivers to meet attachment need
- Parents continue to be used as attachment figures, particularly under conditions of danger and separation
distress
- At the same time, adolescents seek to develop greater emotional self-sufficiency, struggling for
behavioural autonomy
- It can be difficult at times for a teen to fiercely oppose his or her parents’ control efforts while feeling
pulled by both habit and the attachment system to retain their shoulders to cry on
The attachment hierarchy
- Becomes more flexible and multidimensional → peers and romantic partners begin to enter the hierarchy
- Parents → adolescents will turn to under conditions of stress/severe illness (mothers being more likely
than fathers to remain at the top of the attachment)
- Peers/romantic partner → adolescents will turn to for peer related stressors, which can also be severe and
distressing,Nonetheless, not true that teens become more dismissing in general of attachment
Transformations in intrapsychic process (Cognitive/emotional capacities)
- Intrapsychic roots of attachment begin to grow, enriched by developing functional independence +
cognitive capacity
- Adolescents begin to construct a more integrated state of mind regarding attachment
- Displays stability over time
- Adolescents begin to:
- Integrate diverse attachment-relevant experiences (past/present, multiple caregivers, new
relationships)
- Reevaluate cognitions, memories, and affective reactions related to attachment.
- Epistemic space → cognitive and emotional freedom, allows persons to evaluate parents as attachment
figures more objectively
- Emotional/cognitive capacities drive state of mind:
- Emotional capacities → adolescent continues lifelong process of learning to self soothe and
regulate emotional reactions
- Cognitive capacities → development of formal operational reasoning allows adolescents to
contemplate abstract and counterfactual possibilities. Dramatic cognitive differentiation of self
and others allow teens to begin to establish a more consistent view of self. Capacity to de-idealise
parents—to see them in both positive and negative ways.
Transformations in Peer Relationships
- Interactions with peers have begun to take on many of the functions for a lifetime, provide:
- Sources of intimacy
- Feedback about social behavior, social influence, and information
- Attachment, sexual relationships, and lifelong partnerships
- When do peer relationships become attachment relationships?
- Attachment functioned due to value for humans as vulnerable humans to associate with others as a source
of safety
- Absence of positive social connections creates risk for illness, early death, obesity, cigarette smoking
- Zeifman & Hazan (2008) → WHOTO interview, which assesses the extent to which adolescents learn to
turn to peers to meet the various attachment functions outlined by Ainsworth
