Parent and child gender effects in the relationship between attachment and both internalizing and externalizing problems of children between 2 and 5 years old: A dyadic perspective

2025/02/09 by Magda Matetovici, Anouk Spruit, Cristina Colonnesi +2 · 1 voice
Medicine · Psychology · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum

paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/imhj.70002

openalex publication_date 2025/02/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/10

Abstract

Acknowledging that the parent-child attachment is a dyadic relationship, we investigated differences between pairs of parents and preschool children based on gender configurations in the association between attachment and problem behavior. We looked at mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son dyads, but also compared mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, and same versus different gender pairs. We employed multigroup structural equation modeling to explore moderation effects of gender in a sample of 446 independent pairs of parents and preschool children (2-5 years old) from the Netherlands. A stronger association between both secure and avoidant attachment and internalizing problems was found for father-son dyads compared to father-daughter dyads. A stronger association between both secure and avoidant attachment and externalizing problems was found for mother-son dyads compared to mother-daughter and father-daughter dyads. Sons showed a stronger negative association between secure attachment and externalizing problems, a stronger positive association between avoidant attachment and externalizing problems, and a stronger negative association between secure attachment and internalizing problems compared to daughters. These results provide evidence for gender moderation and demonstrate that a dyadic approach can reveal patterns of associations that would not be recognized if parent and child gender effects were assessed separately.

Citations

• Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit
• Disorganized Infant, Child, and Adult Attachment: Collapse in Behavioral and Attentional Strategies
• A power primer.
• Defining and Assessing Individual Differences in Attachment Relationships: Q-Methodology and the Organization of Behavior in Infancy and Early Childhood
• Emotional availability (EA): Theoretical background, empirical research using the EA Scales, and clinical applications
• Sex differences in environmental sensitivity during growth and development
• The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.
• Identification of Confirmatory Factor Analysis Models of Different Levels of Invariance for Ordered Categorical Outcomes
• mice: Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations inR
• Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

Discussions

• Parent and child gender effects in the relationship between attachment and both internalizing and externalizing problems of children between 2 and 5 years old: A dyadic perspective. New paper by Magda [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]

Related

• Infant–mother attachment and the growth of externalizing problems across the primary‐school years
• The Uniqueness of the Child–Father Attachment Relationship: Fathers’ Sensitive and Challenging Play as a Pivotal Variable in a 16‐year Longitudinal Study
• Children’s emerging receptive, positive orientation toward their parents in the network of early attachment relationships
• Are mothers’ protective attachment strategies related to their children’s strategies?
• Parental Psychological Distress and Perceived Child Externalizing Behaviors: Examining Mediators and Bidirectional Effects