Attachment to Parents and Well-Being After High School Graduation: A Study Using Self- and Parent Ratings
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Attachment to Parents and Well‑Being After High School Graduation: A Study Using Self‑ and Parent Ratings Johannes Bohn1 · Jana Holtmann1 · Maike Luhmann2 · Tobias Koch3 · Michael Eid1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Parental attachment is associated with well-being in early emerging adulthood. The present study is the first to measure attachment from multiple perspectives by obtaining attachment ratings from both children and parents, allowing us to examine discrepancies between both attachments in the relationship and the association of those discrepancies with well-being. We used a large sample of 558 young emerging adults and 405 parents to assess self- and parent ratings of different facets of attachment and well-being. Using 15 structural equation models, we were able to show that security, trust, communication, and relatedness (but not dependency) are associated with the emerging adult’s subjective happiness, life satisfaction, and psychological flourishing. Moreover, psychological flourishing was higher for adult children whose parents were more attached to them than would be expected on basis of the child’s attachment. Keywords Subjective well-being · Life satisfaction · Attachment · Multitrait-multimethod measurement · Psychological flourishing · Family relationships Most parents want their children to be happy. One important determinant of children’s wellbeing is their quality of attachment to their parents (Bowlby 1969; Nickerson and Nagle 2004; Wilkinson 2004; Ma and Huebner 2008). Whereas younger children have been a focus in the research of attachment as a predictor of well-being, some studies suggest that this association remains strong beyond childhood (Caron et al. 2012). In the present paper, we examine the association between attachment and well-being among high school graduates. The participating graduates in this study represent the transition period between late Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1090 2-019-00190-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Johannes Bohn johannes.bohn@fu‑berlin.de 1
Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany
2
Department of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
3
Psychologische Hochschule Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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adolescence and emerging adulthood (for simplicity reasons we refer to them as emerging adults). Previous research on attachment and well-being has often taken a simplified view of the complex dynamic relationship between parents and children during this life stage. Specifically, most previous studies on attachment and well-being in emerging adulthood are subject to at least one of the following three limitations. First, the attachment is typically only assessed from the perspective of the child, that is, the quality of the attachment of the child to his or her parents. The quality of attachment of the par
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