Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2024 Jan-Feb;95(1):50-69.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.13998. Epub 2023 Aug 22.

Configurations of mother-child and father-child attachment relationships as predictors of child language competence: An individual participant data meta-analysis

Or Dagan  1 , Carlo Schuengel  2 , Marije L Verhage  2 , Sheri Madigan  3 , Glenn I Roisman  4 , Kristin Bernard  5 , Robbie Duschinsky  6 , Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg  7 , Jean-François Bureau  8 , Abraham Sagi-Schwartz  9   10 , Rina D Eiden  11 , Maria S Wong  12 , Geoffrey L Brown  13 , Isabel Soares  14 , Mirjam Oosterman  2 , R M Pasco Fearon  6 , Howard Steele  15 , Carla Martins  14 , Ora Aviezer  10 ; Collaboration on Attachment to Multiple Parents and Outcomes Synthesis
Collaborators, Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Configurations of mother-child and father-child attachment relationships as predictors of child language competence: An individual participant data meta-analysis

Or Dagan et al. Child Dev. 2024 Jan-Feb.

Abstract

An individual participant data meta-analysis was conducted to test pre-registered hypotheses about how the configuration of attachment relationships to mothers and fathers predicts children's language competence. Data from seven studies (published between 1985 and 2014) including 719 children (Mage : 19.84 months; 51% female; 87% White) were included in the linear mixed effects analyses. Mean language competence scores exceeded the population average across children with different attachment configurations. Children with two secure attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one or no secure attachment relationships (d = .26). Children with two organized attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one organized attachment relationship (d = .23), and this difference was observed in older versus younger children in exploratory analyses. Mother-child and father-child attachment quality did not differentially predict language competence, supporting the comparable importance of attachment to both parents in predicting developmental outcomes.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Ahnert, L., & Schoppe-Sullivan, S. J. (2020). Fathers from an attachment perspective. Attachment & Human Development, 22(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1589054
    1. Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. N. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Erlbaum.
    1. Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Lotz, A., Alyousefi-van Dijk, K., & van IJzendoorn, M. (2019). Birth of a father: Fathering in the first 1,000 days. Child Development Perspectives, 13(4), 247-253. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12347
    1. Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1-48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
    1. Belsky, J., & Fearon, R. M. P. (2002). Infant-mother attachment security, contextual risk, and early development: A moderational analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 14(2), 293-310. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579402002067

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources