Relations among parents' attachment, parenting quality, and autistic and nonautistic children's social-emotional functioning.

Abstract

Attachment theory has demonstrated the longitudinal impact that aspects of the parent-child dyad have on youth's social-emotional development. Yet, little to no work has investigated whether parents' attachment, including parental secure base script (SBS) knowledge and parental attachment styles, are associated with youth's social-emotional functioning or examined mechanisms by which parents' attachment leads to social-emotional functioning. Even less research has examined the role of parents' attachment in parent-child dyads with youth diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; further identified as autistic youth) and its impact on their subsequent social-emotional development. Thus, the current pre-registered study assessed whether parents' attachment was associated with children's maladaptive (internalizing/externalizing symptoms) and adaptive (social competence) social-emotional functioning via parenting quality (authoritative parenting) in 108 nonautistic parent-child dyads and 49 autistic parent-child dyads. Separate structural equation models were run by group. Higher levels of parents' SBS knowledge predicted social competence in autistic parent-child dyads. Additionally, higher levels of parents' attachment-related anxiety predicted lower levels of social competence in autistic parent-child dyads. Attachment-related avoidance predicted lower levels of social competence in nonautistic parent-child dyads and higher levels of externalizing symptoms in autistic parent-child dyads. Results suggest parents' attachment representations may have unique contributions to youth's social-emotional functioning.