Parent-partner and parent-child attachment: Links to children's emotion regulation

Abstract

We investigate the interconnections between couple and parenting relationships and young children's emotion regulation across time. Our goals were to: (1) examine whether mothers' and fathers' attachment security towards their romantic partners relates to mothers- and fathers-child attachment quality; (2) investigate the bidirectional relations between mother- and father-child attachment quality, and children's emotion regulation. We followed 206 children (95 girls, Mage = 4.01 years, SD = 0.57), their mothers, and fathers over 3-time points during the preschool period. Parents reported attachment security towards their romantic partner and the quality of their attachment relationships with the child. Teachers reported children's emotion regulation. Results from a dyadic cross-lagged panel model indicated a consistent negative association between mothers' and fathers' insecure attachment and parents-child attachment quality. Despite some variations according to children's sex and age, overall, findings suggest that a higher father- and mother-child attachment quality links to children's higher emotion regulation abilities.