Citation

van IJzendoorn MH, Bakermans-Kranenburg MJ. J. Soc. Pers. Relat. 2010; 27(2): 200-208.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0265407509360908

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Is attachment in adulthood associated with gender, age, culture, or socioeconomic context? There is a widely held belief that males and younger individuals exhibit a more avoidant or dismissive stance toward attachment experiences, as would subjects from individualized, Western societies and from poorer socio-economic environments. Distributions of Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) classifications in various gender, cultural, socioeconomic, and age groups were compared with the normative distribution of North American non-clinical Caucasian mothers (23% dismissing, 58% secure, 19% preoccupied) through analysis of correspondence. Indeed, adolescent and student samples contained a higher proportion of dismissing attachment classifications than the normative group. No gender differences were found in the use of dismissing versus preoccupied attachment strategies in relatively affluent social environments, and the AAI distributions were largely independent of language and country of origin. Most strikingly, low SES adolescent mothers showed the strongest over-representation of dismissing attachments, which supports the life history theory prediction that in harsh environments individuals adopt a quantity-oriented reproductive strategy in tandem with a dismissing view of attachment.