What Factors Affect Children’s Relationships?

By Cynthia A. Frosch, Ph.D.

There are a variety of factors that may affect the types of relationships young children form. For example, infants who have more difficult temperaments (intense, easily distressed) may have relationships with their caregivers that are marked by more crying and a need to stay closer by. Yet, according to researchers like Alan Sroufe and Sarah Mangelsdorf, infant temperament alone does not determine whether a child will be securely attached to a parent. Children with more difficult temperaments can and do form secure relationships with their parents.

Quality of care and quality of the home environment are important factors as well and researchers tend to emphasize the role that sensitive, responsive caregiving plays in the development of secure attachment relationships. Parents who can read their babies’ cues and respond in a child-centered, supportive manner seem more likely to have children with secure attachment than do parents who are emotionally distant, intrusive, or slow to respond.

Aside from child and parent characteristics, one significant topic in recent years has been the impact of child care on children’s attachments.While earlier talk suggested that child care has a damaging affect on mother-infant relationships, more recent evidence should enable parents to breathe a (cautious) sigh of relief. Results from a large scale study involving over a thousand families across the country and funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that the experience of being in child care, in and of itself, does not create insecure mother-infant attachment relationships. What matters most importantly, however, is the quality of care the child experiences at home. Characteristics of the child’s child care experience are important too, but the quality of care given at home is the critical piece. So quality of care, more than care arrangements, seem to matter for children’s attachment relationships. The READY Method co-author, Margaret T. Owen, Ph.D. has studied the effects of child care extensively.

As our knowledge of young children’s attachment relationships grows, it is likely that we will have a better understanding of how child, parent, family, and environmental factors (including child care) shape the kinds of attachment relationships children develop, as well as what these early relationships mean for children’s later health, happiness, and well-being. One thing is for certain—sensitive, responsive care makes a difference in the lives of children.

For more information:

Becoming Attached by Robert Karen is perhaps one of the most remarkable achievements in the area of early attachment relationships. Although it’s a hefty book, even reading a couple of chapters is likely to impact how you think about your own early experiences, and those of the children in your life.

John Bowlby has written extensively on attachment. Included among his writings are three seminal books: Attachment, Loss, and Separation, as well as a shorter, more reader-friendly book entitled, A Secure Base.