Attachment Security in Pregnancy Mediates the Association Between Maternal Childhood Maltreatment and Emotional and Beha
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Attachment Security in Pregnancy Mediates the Association Between Maternal Childhood Maltreatment and Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Offspring Marissa C. Roth1 · Kathryn L. Humphreys1 · Lucy S. King2 · Sangeeta Mondal3 · Ian H. Gotlib2 · Thalia Robakis4 Received: 5 June 2020 / Revised: 21 September 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Attachment security may be a mechanism by which exposure to early life adversity affects subsequent generations. We used a prospective cohort design to examine this possibility in a convenience sample of 124 women (age = 23–45 years, M = 32.32 [SD = 4.83] years; 57.3% White, 22.6% Asian) who provided self-reports of attachment style during pregnancy using the Attachment Style Questionnaire, of whom 96 (age = 28–50 years, M = 36.67 [SD = 4.90] years; 60.4% White, 19.8% Asian) were reassessed when their child was preschool-age (M = 4.38 [SD = 1.29] years). Women self-reported on their own childhood maltreatment severity and their child’s current emotional and behavioral problems using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Checklist for ages 1.5–5, respectively. Maternal childhood maltreatment severity was associated with less secure, and more avoidant and anxious attachment. Mediation analyses revealed further that less secure maternal attachment, but not avoidant or anxious attachment, mediated the associations between maternal childhood maltreatment and offspring emotional and behavioral problems. These findings suggest that improving maternal attachment security, which can be identified even prior to the child’s birth, is an important target to consider for intervention efforts aimed at minimizing adverse intergenerational effects of early life adversity. Keywords Childhood maltreatment · Adult attachment · Pregnancy · Intergenerational effects
Introduction The adverse effects of stressful experiences can be transmitted across generations [1]. Severe stress exposure in parents, including experiencing childhood maltreatment, is a risk Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-020-01073-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Marissa C. Roth [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203, USA
2
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
3
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
4
Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
factor for emotional and behavioral problems in offspring [2, 3]. In particular, maternal experiences of maltreatment during childhood are associated with increased rates of offspring emotional difficulties across childhood and adolescence [4–6]. Adverse experiences in childhood have been associated with the developm
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