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Review
. 2025 Aug 27;12(9):1133.
doi: 10.3390/children12091133.

The Relationship Between Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Infant/Child-Caregiver Attachment: A Scoping Review

David J Gilbert  1 , Alan D Price  1 , Penny A Cook  1 , Raja A S Mukherjee  1   2
Affiliations
Review

The Relationship Between Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Infant/Child-Caregiver Attachment: A Scoping Review

David J Gilbert et al. Children (Basel). .

Abstract

Introduction: Secure infant/child-caregiver attachment is crucial for the development of social and emotional functioning and can affect long-term outcomes, such as adult relationships, but it may also be influenced by prenatal and early childhood risk factors. Children with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) have a complex spectrum of strengths and difficulties and often have the additional risk of early life adversity. There is some evidence that children with PAE are at increased risk of insecure attachment, but it is unclear whether this is consistent or why it is the case. No published review has focused on the relationship between PAE and attachment. Methods: A systematic search of seven academic databases using the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines was undertaken by two reviewers to identify primary studies that have focused on the relationship between PAE and attachment. Quality assessments were undertaken using the Quality of Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies tool, and the report was written following the PRISMA-ScR checklist. Results: A total of 4199 records were returned from the database searches. A total of 11 studies (eight peer-reviewed papers and three dissertations), published between 1987 and 2021, met the criteria. Five studies showed that PAE was related to insecure or disorganised attachment, two of which showed that infant irritability and caregiver-infant interaction mediated this relationship. The other six studies found no significant relationship between PAE and attachment. Conclusions: This scoping review demonstrates that there is a dearth of published research on this topic, and none that takes advantage of more recent understanding of the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and neurodevelopmental disorders. There is some evidence that PAE may impact the attachment relationship via caregiver-infant interaction and infant irritability, but further studies, including those that assess the additional impact of early life adversity, are needed.

Keywords: attachment security; attachment styles; fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; prenatal alcohol exposure; scoping review.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram for systematic search.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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