How Many Children Are Securely Attached to Their Parents?

How do psychologists determine how attached a young child is to their mum or dad? Since very young children who do not speak cannot simply be asked how they feel about their parents, psychologists have developed different behavioral tests to measure the attachment between children and their parents.

One of the most widely used tests for this end is the Strange Situation Test. The Strange Situation Test is an observational procedure in which the mom or dad enters a room with the child. In the room is an assistant of the psychologist. The parent performs a number of actions, such as reading a newspaper. Crucially, the parent leaves the room two times for a short period, leaving the child with the stranger in the room. The parent quickly returns and the psychologist analyses the child’s behavior when the parent is in the room, when the parent leaves, when the child is alone with the stranger, and when the parent returns.

Based on different child behaviors in the situations, four types of attachment between child and parent have been characterized:

1. Secure: Securely attached children protest when the parent leaves the room and quickly return to the parent when they come back seeking comfort and security.
2. Avoidant: These children largely avoid contact with their parents.
3. Resistant: These children are unhappy when the parent leaves, but are angry or passive when they return.
4. Disorganized: These children show conflicted or confused behavior that cannot be classified into the other three categories.

Which Attachment Style Is Most Common?

Since its invention, the Strange Situation Test has been used in many psychological studies around the globe. A new study, now published in the American Psychological Association (APA) journal Psychological Bulletin (Madigan et al., 2023), analyzed data from 285 studies with over 20,000 infant-parent dyads that used the Strange Situation Tests.

In the study, scientist Sheri Madigan from the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary and an international team of experts used a technique called meta-analysis to integrate the data from all 285 studies. This was done to get more reliable data than from single studies with small samples.

The results were quite clear: The secure attachment style was the most common one, with 51.6 percent of children showing this attachment style across studies. Yet just as importantly, almost half of the children did not show a secure attachment style to their parents.

About 23.5 percent of the investigated children showed a disorganized attachment style, 14.7 percent an avoidant attachment style, and 10.2 percent a resistant attachment style. This distribution was very robust and there were no significant differences between attachment to mother or father. There was also no effect from the children's age or gender.

What Leads to an Insecure Attachment Between Child and Parent?

While it is positive the secure attachment style is the most common, it is concerning that almost half of the children did not show a secure attachment to their parents. Fortunately, the study also offered some insights into why children develop insecure attachment styles.

By integrating additional data points from the 285 integrated studies in the analysis, the scientist could identify variables relevant to developing an insecure attachment style. First, children from groups with high sociodemographic risks (such as poverty) had a higher risk of showing avoidant and disorganized attachment than children from families that had higher incomes.

Second, children whose parents had a mental illness had a higher chance of showing disorganized attachment than children with two healthy parents. Moreover, children that experienced maltreatment or were adopted from foster or institutional care also had a higher chance of showing disorganized attachment. Therefore, the scientists concluded that a secure attachment between children and parents is more likely to develop if children and parents have lower stress levels.

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