Middle childhood represents a significant period of change both for a child’s cognition and social functioning. As children become more autonomous and self-reliant, they begin to spend more time away from their parents and start to expand their social networks. They also assume greater responsibility for their behavior [1]. Further significant changes in emotional and cognitive functioning emerge that are also employed in the service of attachment processes. As children begin to develop the capacity for abstract reasoning, as well as cognitive flexibility, they become to employ alternative plans of action [2] better. Development of memory and meta-cognition lead children to better understand different points of view, more effectively regulate their emotions, clearly communicate about them, and to take care of themselves [3]. All those changes manifest in a more proactive approach in a child’s negotiations with the attachment figure and coordinating according to his or her plans with those of the caregiver [4]. They also impact the internal working model of attachment; therefore, studies on attachment in middle childhood are pertinent. Indeed, in recent years, there has been an acceleration of research on attachment in middle childhood; however, many questions remain unanswered. One such question concerns the universality of normative trends in the attachment in middle childhood, related to a child’s essential individual characteristics such as child’s age and sex, that are observed in studies conducted almost exclusively in highly individualistic Western cultures. However, as it will be discussed below, the development of attachment is embedded in particular cultural contexts [4], and thus cultural orientations concerning autonomy and relatedness might influence the development of attachment, especially in middle childhood, when significant individuation-related processes begin. The present paper provides some insight into developmental trends in the attachment in middle childhood by investigating the role of a child’s age, sex, and emotionality on attachment to mothers and fathers in a sample from Polish culture, in which boundaries between collectivistic and individualistic orientations are somewhat blurred.
Child-parent attachment
Bowlby defined attachment as the emotional bond between an infant and his caregiver, expressing in attachment behaviors (e.g., smiling, vocalizing, crying, and following), the main goal of which is to establish and maintain proximity with the caregiver. The behavioral attachment system is mainly activated by psychological or psychical threat and serves to protect the baby. Currently, it is claimed that the attachment relationship is rather dyad-specific [5]; hence, attachment with the mother may be different from the one with the father or another caregiver. The most important determinant of the child-parent attachment quality is the maternal sensitivity, defined as the caregiver’s ability to accurately perceive and infer the meaning of the child’s signals, and to respond to them instantly and appropriately [6]. The link between maternal sensitivity and attachment security is widely supported by studies in the US and other Western countries [7]. According to the attachment theory [8], the attachment and exploration systems are inextricably linked - children explore their environment when they feel protected and comforted by their caregiver (the so-called “secure base” phenomenon). However, when stressed, children give up their exploratory activities and seek proximity with their attachment figure (the so-called “safe haven” phenomenon). Children who receive responding and calming caregiving and perceive their caregiver as helpful and available, become securely attached. However, when the caregiver is unable to fulfill the secure base and secure haven functions adequately, the child’s sense of security becomes compromised. Two distinct styles of coping with attachment insecurity were identified [9]. The first one, preoccupied attachment, is characterized by a strong need for the caregiver in stressful and novel situations and difficulty in deriving comfort from the caregiver, which results in limitation of the child’s exploratory behavior. On the other hand, avoidant attachment ich characterized by limited affective engagement with the caregiver, avoidance of the caregiver both during exploration and reunion, and failure to seek the caregiver for assistance with coping [6, 9]. The existing evidence suggests that more secure children are more socially and emotionally competent, as compared to insecure children [10], and that the attachment patterns are quite stable over time [11].
Developmental trends in attachment in middle childhood
In attachment literature, middle childhood is characterized as a time when changes in the intensity of attachment behaviors and conditions activating and terminating the attachment system occur. According to Mayseless [12 p14], a decrease in the intensity of attachment behavior in middle childhood is impacted by “preparations for refocusing and reorienting the investment in affectional attachment bond between children and their parents or primary caregivers to others and their autonomy.” Nevertheless, it is claimed that children in middle childhood continue to use their parents as secure bases supporting exploration and secure havens in a time of stress; thus, parents remain the principal attachment figures. Due to a growth in self-regulation skills in middle childhood, the goal of the attachment system changes from proximity to the attachment figure (as in early childhood) to the availability of the attachment figure [8]. The latter one is reflected in open communication between parent and child, parental responsiveness to child needs, and the parent’s physical accessibility to the child [13]. However, in the attachment research, there was relatively little attention to the child’s characteristics underlying individual differences in the attachment in middle childhood, such as the child’s age, sex, or temperament. Moreover, still only few studies include fathers as attachment figures, thus still little is known about the differences between attachment to mothers and fathers in middle childhood.
Among existing studies, Lieberman, Doyle, and Markiewicz [14] observed some significant changes in attachment security during middle childhood; 12–14 year-olds reported less relying on mothers and fathers than did 9–11 year-olds, however, children’s perceptions of parents’ availability did not vary with age. Moreover, it was found that preoccupied coping with respect both to mother and father declined with age, but avoidant coping inclined [1, 9]. These results suggest that age changes in attachment styles in middle childhood ought to be interpreted within the context of children’s increasing independence, autonomy from parents, and decision-making [1].
A growing body of evidence also suggests that some sex-specific aspects of attachment styles emerge in middle childhood [e.g., 15]. Namely, girls are classified more frequently as secure or ambivalent while boys - as avoidant or disorganized, and those trends are observed both in normative and different risk samples [e.g., 16] and hold across different assessment methods [9, 17, 18]. It is worth to note that in some studies on adult attachment, similar patterns were found, and it is observed cross-culturally [19]. Based on previous studies, it seems that those results are not likely to be measurement-specific or attributable to cognitive and language development. Del Giudice [15, 20] argue that the emergence of sex differences at around 8-years old is related to a reorganization of the endocrine mechanisms (adrenarche) that impact brain development, and thus triggers sex-specific psychological trajectories, which are supposed to be part of a broader shift towards sex-specific psychosocial reproductive strategies in early adulthood. Girls display more ambivalence (preoccupation) to maximize relatedness and support from the family. Boys, on the other hand, display more avoidance and emotional distance, accompanied by autonomy, competition, and status-seeking in the same-sex peer group [15]. An alternative explanation emphasizes social influences on the development of attachment; in the course of socialization, girls are taught to show affiliate responses to regulate negative feelings when stressed, while boys are spurred to react in a fight-or-flight fashion [21].
In middle childhood, some diversification in forming affectional bonds with mothers and fathers occurs, and different conditions that activate the attachment system leading a child to look for support and protection from different attachment figures [22]. Mothers are typically seen as the secure havens to whom children turn in the case of distress, hurt, or sickness. Fathers, in turn, are thought to be likely to serve more as secure bases and playmates who expose children to challenging games and activities [23]. However, research findings are mixed, with some studies showing increasing paternal availability over time [1], other reporting lower felt security with mother than with father [24]. Some results also indicate that fathers’ involvement with their children increases as their children grow older, while mothers’ involvement is rather constant [25]. However, the studies mentioned above were conducted in Western cultures (mainly in the U.S. and Canada); therefore, it is challenging to state whether results would be similar in different than Western societies. One could expect somewhat different patterns of those trends due to the differences in fathering views and practices that are products and expressions of culture [26].
Moreover, the interaction of a child’s and parent’s sex may be one of the crucial factors in children’s attachment during middle childhood. Some evidence exists that fathers tend to be more involved with their sons than with daughters, since fathers and sons may identify with one another more and share similar interaction styles [27]. The attachment research seems to confirm those results; in the study of Diener and colleagues [28], girls reported significantly higher attachment security with their mothers than with their fathers, and boys reported significantly higher attachment security with their fathers than did girls. Western studies also reveal some specificity in links between attachment figure and the type of attachment insecurity in middle childhood. In Boldt, Kochanska, Grekin, and Brock’s study [29], child attachment avoidance was higher with fathers, but ambivalence and disorganization - with mothers. Those results might reflect that children probably tend to be more restrained with fathers and more expressive with mothers, which results from differences in parental responsiveness to children’s emotional cues. Some evidence suggests that in Western cultures, fathers use more punitive emotion socialization strategies than mothers do [30]. However, those findings have not yet been replicated in other cultures; thus, it is difficult to say whether the differences in attachment security with mothers and fathers among boys and girls are culture-universal or emic.
Relatively less is known about other than age and sex child’s characteristics related to individual differences in middle childhood attachment. Meanwhile, it should be noted that compared to earlier developmental periods, children in middle childhood undergo more influences outside the family and are more able to shape their environments and social interactions on their own, accordingly with their preferences and innate predispositions [1]. Thus, Bosmans and Kerns [4] argue that in middle childhood (as compared to infancy), parent-child relationships might be more shaped by the dynamics of gene-environment interactions, with even more extensive effects of biologically determined factors on attachment. One such factor might be the child’s temperament, an innate and heritable set of traits that remain stable over time [31]. Temperament, as a biologically determined basis of personality, seems to be one of the most malleable factors underlying individual differences in middle childhood attachment, as it determines a child’s emotional reactivity, as well as the way people relate to each other [31]. However, thus far, research has mainly focused on the role of temperament in the early attachment [for a review, see: 32], whereas less attention has been given to the links between temperament and attachment in middle childhood, although it is widely recognized that the quality of child’s attachment is a product of the interaction between the child’s biological dispositions and the quality of parental care [32]. Since traits such as a child’s sensitivity to stimuli causing distress and a tendency to experience fear, anger, and dissatisfaction [31] play a crucial role in emotion regulation and self-regulatory processes, those dispositions seem to be valid in the context of parent-child interactions [33].
On the other hand, also attachment styles are closely related to emotion regulation strategies, as a child employs those styles in an attempt to get basic attachment needs meet accordingly to the attachment figure’s responsiveness [34]. However, in opposite to temperament, attachment is not inherent, but instead, a child rebuilds attachment representations through the interactions with the primary caregiver [35]. Bowlby [8] argued that a child not only integrates new experiences into existing internal working models of attachment (assimilation) but also revises them to accommodate current experiences with an attachment figure (accommodation). Admittedly, one of the core tenets of attachment theory states that the quality of the child-parent attachment depends at most on the caregiver’s sensitivity and availability to the child’s cues, and his response is learned in the interaction with the caregiver and set in internal working models. However, it was observed that in middle childhood, children who are more emotionally reactive tended to be more vulnerable to experience distress and interpreted mother’s ambiguous behaviour as unsupportive, regardless of the objective meaning of her behaviour [36]. Hence, the concern arises that as children grow older and their thinking becomes more abstract and reflective, those with high negative emotionality might relatively more intensively assimilate such biased interpretations in their attachment representations, and they might use specific secondary attachment strategies more profoundly than children with low negative emotionality. Some research has shown that children who have high levels of difficult temperament were less capable of utilizing their attachment representations to regulate their emotions [e.g., 35]. However, there is a lack of research concerning emotionality in the context of normative trends in the attachment in middle childhood, and no research investigated its potential interactions with age, sex, and attachment to parents in that developmental period.
Attachment in the context of culture
Although those relatively small number of current findings add substantially to the knowledge about attachment in middle childhood, one of the major problems is that most of the studies have been primarily confined to Western contexts. Surprisingly, little is known about whether the findings on predictors of individual differences and development in the attachment in middle childhood found in Western cultures, hold within non-Western ones. Meanwhile, the development of attachment is embedded in particular cultural contexts of socio-political, historical, and economic circumstances [4]. As Keller [37 p189] points, “independence from others and personal autonomy are the ideological foundations of attachment theory with notable consequences for the definition of parenting quality, childrearing goals, and with respect to an understanding of desirable endpoints of development.” Indeed, cultures differ significantly in their models of autonomy and relatedness and related to them childrearing practices or parent-child behavioural relationships [38]. Considering that the central developmental theme of attachment in middle childhood is the balance between a child’s growing autonomy and the need for relatedness, cultural differences in developmental trends in the attachment might be considered in terms of individualism and collectivism orientations [39]. Within individualistic cultural contexts (e.g., the U.S. or Western Europe), people place relatively greater emphasis on independence and autonomy. In contrast, within collectivistic cultural contexts (e.g., Japan or China), people place a higher weight on interdependence and relational harmony [40].
Indeed, individualistic and collectivistic values may impact the development of the behavioural attachment system [38], but there is a lack of empirical studies systematically testing the cross-cultural differences in developmental trends in middle childhood attachment, and the factors explaining it. Meanwhile, recent evidence suggests that cultural differences in attachment go far beyond the differences in the distribution of the attachment styles [37, 41]. For instance, Mizuta and colleagues [42] found that Japanese and US dyads did not differ in attachment security and maternal sensitivity during separation-reunion episodes, but Japanese preschoolers showed more need for bodily closeness (amae) than US preschoolers. Moreover, amae was positively linked to internalizing behaviours in US children but not for Japanese ones, which suggests that amae can be one of the culture-specific attachment-related behaviours. Other comparisons of the U.S. and Japan studies also reveal the cultural relativity of three core hypotheses of attachment theory: that maternal sensitivity is the antecedent of secure attachment, that secure attachment leads to social competence, and that securely attached children use the caregiver as a secure base for exploration [7]. For example, the primary function of maternal sensitivity in an individualistic view is to foster a child’s exploration and autonomy, assert his or her desires, and to promote the child’s individuation [7]. By contrast, in collectivistic cultures, mothers labelled as sensitive are expected to react in anticipation of children’s signals, and their reactions promote a child’s relatedness and emotional closeness. Here the primary function of sensitivity is to help the child regulate his or her emotional states and to promote the child’s social engagement and interdependence [7, 43]. Such different notions about the functions of maternal sensitivity are also linked with the way attachment theorists define social competence. In individualistic cultures, this competence entails mainly exploration, autonomy, and a positive view of self [7], which is essential for self-dependence. In opposite, in the collectivistic culture of Japan social competence often means dependence, self-criticism, and the ability to coordinate one’s needs with the needs of others [7]. There is also some evidence that even the link between attachment and exploration seems to be less primary in non-Western cultures [37], where attachment security is more strongly linked to social dependence and loyalty. At the same time, in Western societies, strong relations between attachment security, individuation, and autonomous mastery of the environment are consequently observed [37]. On the other hand, as Bakermans-Kranenburg and collaborators [44] postulate, in attachment research, the role of culture should not be confused with the impacts of socioeconomic status (SES). In their study, those authors found that even though there was a similar correlation pattern between maternal sensitivity and infant attachment security, African-American children scored lower on attachment security than the white children. Further analyses revealed that African-American ethnicity was related to lower-income, which in turn affected infant-mother attachment.
What about Poland?
Despite the growing recognition that in the current era of globalization and socio-political changes individualist–collectivist depictions of value systems and developmental goals are overly simplistic [38], little (if any) is known about the specificity of attachment in the so-called cultures of social change [45], as those studies instead focus on the Eastern-Western dichotomy. In those cultures, which are typical for most post-communist countries, the boundaries between collectivistic and individualistic orientations are somewhat blurred. Despite the rapid institutional changes, there is a much slower change in social values, and simultaneous socialization of dependence and independence occurs [46]. Such an example might be fostering independence in children, which is thought to lead to the enhancement of relational skills [38].
An example of such a culture of social change is the Republic of Poland, an ethnically homogenous country located in Central Europe, which in the last three decades, has undergone a swift transition to capitalism and democracy [47]. At the end of June 2017, the population of Poland amounted to 38 million people, with 6.9 million children aged 0–18 (35% of which were in middle childhood [48]). However, there are relatively few studies on child-parent attachment in Poland. For example, the study of Czyżowska and Gurba [49] confirmed the general hypothesis about the impact of child-mother on the later adult relationship with romantic partner: closeness experienced in relationships with parents during childhood and adolescence was related to the feeling of intimacy with one’s partner which in turn had an impact on the perceived quality of the relationship. Another Polish study [50] revealed that adolescents suffering from mixed disorders of conduct and emotions perceived their parents as less protective and revealed a higher level of anxiety than did the control group. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is a lack of Polish studies on predictors of individual differences in middle childhood attachment. Moreover, still little is known about the differences between attachment to mothers and fathers. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether the findings from other cultures hold within the Polish samples.
In Poland, the most of traditional parenting practices still promote connection to the family and other close relationships, respect and obedience [51], but at the same time Polish parents believe about the fundamental requirements for children’s achievement of autonomy, personal choice, intrinsic motivation, and self-esteem [46]. Trommsdorff and Nauck [52], in their Value of Children study found, that in Poland, there is greater valuing of such developmental goals as obedience in the family and popularity among other people, comparing to Germany, which is seen as a highly individualistic society. In turn, Hofstede [53] points to a smaller individualistic orientation in Poland than in Germany and in other Western Europe countries. Another study [46] revealed that Polish mothers are more collectivistic in their socialization goals than German mothers, and also their parenting practices are more in line with those values. Moreover, Lubiewska [46] pointed out that due to the fast cultural changes in Poland in the last decades, there exist micro-cultural discrepancies between relatedness-oriented mothers and their autonomy-oriented children, what creates an interesting question about developmental trends in the attachment in the period, when children expand their social worlds and gain more autonomy. At the same time, Kerns and colleagues [1] claim that depending on social values (e.g., independence vs. interdependence) in different cultural contexts, the decline in utilization of parents may emerge at different times. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no systematic research on developmental trends in the attachment in middle childhood was conducted in Poland. Hence it is difficult to compare those trends to another culture, especially in the context of coexistence of autonomy-relatedness values.
The current study
As it has been mentioned before, relatively little is known whether the findings on predictors of individual differences in the attachment in middle childhood found in Western cultures hold within the non-Western ones. Moreover, relatively little attention is paid to the child’ s characteristics underlying individual differences in the attachment with fathers as compared to attachment with mothers in middle childhood. Therefore, the first purpose of this study was to examine the role of a child’s age, sex, and emotionality in a middle-childhood attachment with both parents in the Polish sample. The second aim was to compare the obtained results to those focused on Western cultures.
The recent results show that in Poland, most of the traditional parenting practices still promote relatedness, respect, and obedience [51], and the Polish mothers are still rather collectivistic in their socialization goals. There is also a higher valuing of obedience in the family and popularity among other people, compared to other Western Europe countries [53]. Therefore it was predicted that in general Polish sample, children would report more preoccupied than avoidant coping strategies with their parents (hypothesis 1).
Furthermore, in middle childhood, specific components of the attachment relationship may remain stable with age, while others may change [14]. Moreover, in different cultural contexts, the decline in the utilization of parents may emerge at different times, depending on social values (e.g., independence vs. interdependence [1]). Therefore, it was expected that older children would report more avoidant coping strategies with their parents than younger children (hypothesis 2), but there would be no age differences in preoccupied coping strategies (hypothesis 3).
Beyond the proposed culture-specific hypotheses, a culture-universal link between a child’s sex and attachment insecurity was also hypothesized. Existing findings reveal the existence of universal, biologically-based reorganization of the endocrine mechanisms triggering sex-specific psychological trajectories in middle childhood [15, 20]. There is also cross-culturally observed specificity in gender-socialization practices in which girls are taught to show more affiliate responses than boys [21]. Hence, it was expected that girls would report more preoccupied coping strategies with their parents than boys (hypothesis 4), and boys would report more avoidant coping strategies than girls (hypothesis 5).
Another aim of the present study was to test the role of emotionality (a temperamental trait depicting the negative emotionality and intensity of emotional reactions) in middle childhood attachment. It was observed that in middle childhood, children who are more emotionally reactive tended to be more vulnerable to experience distress, and learn to interpret the mother’s ambiguous behavior as unsupportive [36]. Given that biologically determined factors might have more substantial effects on attachment than during infancy [4], it was expected that emotionality would be positively linked to avoidant (hypothesis 6a) and preoccupied (hypothesis 6b) coping, and negatively to attachment security (hypothesis 6c) only in older children.
Regarding the fact that research is unclear to allow one to relate a child’s sex and age to attachment security and coping strategies in an emotionality-specific way, the moderating role of temperament in those links was tested as an exploratory part of this study.
The present study also had one more goal. Namely, still unexplored are the differences between mother-child and father-child attachment in middle childhood, and this fact applies both to Western and non-Western cultures. As it has been said previously, some authors suggest that mothers are typically seen as the secure havens, and fathers tend to serve more as secure bases [23]. Research findings are mixed, with some studies showing increasing paternal availability over time, as fathers’ involvement with their children increases as their children grow older [1]. There is also scarcity in studies on fathering in Poland. Therefore, given a lack of a strong theoretical rationale, the effects of the parental figure on a child’s security, preoccupied, and avoidant coping was also tested as another exploratory part of this study. Considering the role of a child’s age, sex, and temperament, and how the attachment representations regarding mother and father may vary from one another may help us to better understand each parent’s unique contribution to attachment development in middle childhood.
Understanding the developmental trends in the attachment to mothers and fathers, as well as the roles of child characteristics and gender in middle childhood, represent essential questions in developmental research. Comparing results of this study to the bulk of attachment research that focuses on Western cultures would enrich our knowledge not only about the developmental trends and individual differences in middle-childhood attachment but also it could help to understand the role of culture in that phenomenon. Finally, examining the role of the parent’s sex and child’s emotionality in attachment might help to better understand the underpinnings of individual differences in the attachment in middle childhood.