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Attachment Theory: SevenUnresolved Issues andQuestions for Future ResearchPhilip A. Cowan a & Carolyn Pape Cowan aa University of California , Berkeley, USAPublished online: 05 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Philip A. Cowan & Carolyn Pape Cowan (2007) AttachmentTheory: Seven Unresolved Issues and Questions for Future Research, Research inHuman Development, 4:3-4, 181-201, DOI: 10.1080/15427600701663007

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RESEARCH IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, 4(3–4), 181–201Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Attachment Theory: Seven UnresolvedIssues and Questions for Future Research

Philip A. Cowan and Carolyn Pape CowanUniversity of California, Berkeley

Although Bowlby (1968) assumed that attachment theory was relevant to relation-ships from birth to old age, early studies have focused on mothers and infants.We briefly describe extensions of attachment research across the life span andrelationships. We then discuss 7 unresolved issues and questions: Is attachmentbest measured as categories or continua? Do individuals hold unitary or multiplemodels of attachment? Does early attachment to a caregiver serve as a templatefor attachments throughout life? Does attachment change developmentally overtime? Is attachment culture specific or universal? How can a family systemsperspective increase understanding of cross-generational adaptation? Is attachmenttheory helpful to parents and therapists? Although suggesting the necessity forrevisions of attachment theory, we acknowledge its powerful contributions to thestudy of human relationships.

Attachment theory, a now-classic set of ideas about how infants form social-emotional relationships with their caregivers, was developed in the mid-20thcentury by Bowlby (1969), a child analyst in London, England. In his earlywritings, Bowlby (1979) claimed that human attachments to primary caregiversplay a “vital role � � � from the cradle to the grave,” (p. 129), but the initialemphasis of his systematic empirical investigations was on infants’ attachmentto their mothers. We begin with a brief outline of the developmental unfolding ofthe theory and research from infancy through old age and from an exclusive studyof parent–child connections to a large body of research on partners’ romanticattachment to each other.

The literature on attachment theory has been growing for five decades. Ourreading of this literature suggests that despite its laudatory contributions to

Requests for reprints should be sent to Philip A. Cowan, Department of Psychology, 3210 TolmanHall–1650, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650. E-mail: pcowan@berkeley.edu

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the understanding of social and emotional development, a number of criticalunresolved issues about attachment theory remain. We have chosen seven ofthese issues for further discussion on the grounds that they suggest neededmodifications in the theory and guidelines for further research.

ATTACHMENT THEORY AND RESEARCH ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN

Given space limitations, we focus this article only on attachment to parentsand romantic partners, leaving out studies of attachment to peers, siblings, andfriends. We have not described all of the available measures of attachmentat each age nor presented evidence for the validity of the constructs andmeasures; extensive information on these topics has already been summarized incomprehensive reviews of attachment research (e.g., Cassidy & Shaver, 1999;Mikulincer Florian, Cowan, & Cowan, 2002).

CONSTRUCTS AND MEASURES OF ATTACHMENT IN INFANCY

Somewhere between 9 and 12 months, infants develop a behavioral system tomaintain proximity to their mothers; they prefer mother to other caretakers and reactto strangers with fear or avoidance. What distinguishes attachment as a behavioralsystem rather than a specific response to a stimulus is the fact that under condi-tions of threat, real or perceived, an infant develops one of several relatively stablestrategies with the same goal—to seek comfort from a person who can function asa secure base and help them establish a sense of felt security. That is, attachmenttheory is concerned not with affectional bonds in general but rather with ways ofmaintaining relationships with significant people in times of vulnerability or stress.

Interest in Bowlby’s ideas (1968) was stimulated by the creation of aninnovative method of measuring working models of attachment (Ainsworth &Wittig, 1969). The Strange Situation Procedure is a 22-min structured laboratoryprotocol with eight prescribed periods in which a mother and a stranger enterand leave the room while the infant remains with some toys. The focus is on theinfant’s reactions to these separations and especially to the final reunion with theparent. Some infants move away (avoidant), and some alternate between bids forattention and angry rejection or tantrums (ambivalent or resistant); these childrenare categorized as insecurely attached. Other infants, about two thirds in middle-class samples, actively greet the parent or complain when mother leaves andreturns; but after being comforted by her, they resume their play with the toys(Solomon & George, 1999). These children are categorized as securely attached.A fourth category added by Main and Solomon (1986) describes infants whoexhibit signs of disorganized/disoriented behavior when their mothers return.

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Bowlby (1969) and Ainsworth and Wittig (1969) assumed that the behavioralsystem observed in the strange situation is governed by a working model ofintimate relationships. The model is a mental representation or schema thatdepicts two central aspects of relationship with a caretaker—whether the infantcan expect to receive comfort and support when stressed or frightened andwhether he or she is worthy of love and support. Perceptions of these aspectsof the relationship are interconnected; a child who is consistently ridiculed maydevelop an image of a parent as rejecting and a sense of self as unworthy of beingloved. Two points about working models are important. First, attachment theoryis concerned not only with the relationship as it can be observed from outsidebut especially as it can be inferred from the child’s internal perspective on therelationship. Second, the model is constructed from the child’s experiences andis subject to revision over time based on experiences with the parent and intimateothers.

ADULT ATTACHMENT TO PARENTS

For the first 25 years or so in the development of attachment theory, attachmenttheorists in the mainstream of developmental psychology had no systematicmethods to measure adults’ working models of attachment to their parents. Then,George, Kaplan, and Main (1985) constructed a 60-90-min interview to assessadults’ working models of attachment—the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).Respondents give five adjectives to describe their relationship with each parentand specific anecdotes to support the choice of each adjective. The interview alsoasks why the interviewee thinks the parents behaved as they did and whether therelationship with them has changed over time. Finally, questions center on whatthe parents did when the child was hurt or ill and what happened when (if) therewere long separations, all to determine whether parents functioned as a securebase for the child in times of stress.

Coders examine not only the positive or negative aspects of the relationshipsdescribed but also whether the narrative presents a coherent account of therelationships. The main goal of the coding is not to try to infer what reallyhappened in the past but to describe the adult’s current representations of hisor her primary attachment relationships. From a pattern analysis of continuousscales, a single predominating attachment category is determined, a task thatrequires extensive training. The three major categories for adults’ attachmentstyles, not coincidentally, resemble those developed for children’s attachmentstyles—dismissing (avoidant), preoccupied (ambivalent), and secure. Two adultattachment categories were added to the coding system over the next decade—unresolved about loss or trauma and cannot classify—both describing moredisorganized forms of attachment.

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ADULTS’ ATTACHMENT TO A ROMANTIC PARTNER

Questionnaire Measures of Couple Attachment Style

At the same time that George et al. (1985) in developmental psychology werecreating the AAI to assess parent–child relationships, social psychologists inter-ested in romantic relationships were struck by obvious similarities between whatBowlby (1988) described as infants’ behavior in seeking proximity to an attachmentfigure when stressed or anxious and adults’ behavior with romantic partners whensuffering from a threat of loss or the actual loss of the adult relationship (Hazan& Shaver, 1987). The major conceptual difference between attachment to parentsand to romantic partners is that whereas the parent acts as a secure base forthe child, couple relationships are more reciprocal, at least in theory, with eachpartner serving as a potential source of comfort and security for the other.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) initially created three short paragraphs, eachbased on Ainsworth and Wittig’s (1969) description of the major categoriesof attachment in infancy. Hazan and Shaver asked respondents to reflect ontheir romantic relationships and select which of the three descriptions (avoidant,ambivalent, secure) they resembled most. Many investigators adopted the Hazanand Shaver measurement approach early on, but gradually, most either decon-structed the paragraphs into 17 separate questionnaire items or developed longerand more complex questionnaires (Experience in Close Relationships; Brennan,Clark, & Shaver, 1998). All of these produced continuous measures, factoredin two dimensions—anxiety and avoidance—of what has come to be called“attachment style.” Attachment style can also be measured in terms of categoriesif some arbitrary cutoff is used to distinguish positive from negative ends of thecontinuum or continuous scores that reflect the strength of endorsement of itemson both dimensions.

Interview Measures of Couple Attachment Security

To avoid the problem of investigating adult attachment with an interview andcouple attachment with a questionnaire, over the past dozen years, four groupsof investigators have worked independently and without knowledge of the othersto develop measures of couple attachment, using interviews closely modeled onthe AAI. The Current Relationship Interview (Crowell & Owens, 1996) and theMarital Attachment Interview (Dickstein, Seifer, St. Andre, & Schiller, 2001)provide three or four categorical classifications of each partner’s state of mindregarding their relationship as a couple.

Two additional teams of investigators created an interview that follows theAAI closely in structure and content, focuses on past and current romanticrelationships, but adopts a prototype approach to coding with continuous scores.The Romantic Relationship Interview (Furman, Simon, Shaffer, & Bouchey,

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2002) produces three codes based on how prototypically secure, dismissing,and preoccupied the transcript is on a 9-point scale. The research team ofAlexandrov, Cowan, and Cowan (2005) also devised a Couple AttachmentInterview (CAI) based on the AAI but with a prototype coding system using threecontinuous 9-point scales (with 1 indicating that the protocol does not resemblethe prototype, to 9 indicating that the protocol contains the central criteria andmany of the secondary criteria) to rate how closely the interview resemblessecure, dismissing, and preoccupied working models of couple attachment. Thehallmark of the secure prototype with reference to couple attachment is a coherentand credible narrative that paints a believable picture of two individuals involvedin a relationship, one that is either loving and satisfying overall, with sufficientevidence to support this description, or if less than fully satisfying, the respondenttalks about the problems in a reflective, balanced, contained manner.

The theoretically based reason for coding the interview transcript withreference to all three prototypes came from the hypothesis that rather than asingle state of mind, each individual has available all of the attachment behavioralsystems. Individuals differ, however, in the likelihood that secure, dismissing,or preoccupied strategies will emerge in response to threat. With reference toa partner, one person may show signs of secure attachment but be moderatelydismissing and a little preoccupied, whereas another person may show someother combination of the three strategies.

ATTACHMENT IN THE STUDY OF OLD AGE

Long before developmental psychologists came to the study of attachmentprocesses in older samples, a number of scholars from various disciplines beganto take Bowlby’s (1969) early claim seriously that attachment issues extendacross the life span. Excellent examples can be found in Special Issue onAttachment and Aging in the journal Attachment and Human Development(Magai & Consedine, 2004) and in a review of research up to the year 2000 byBradley and Cafferty (2001) who noted questions about the role of attachmentthat are unique to the study of aging. Over the decades, but increasingly in recentyears, there have been extensive discussions of the role of attachment securityin (a) the behavior of adult caregivers toward their older chronically ill parents,(b) the behavior of older parents as care receivers, (c) the unfolding of griefand mourning after the loss of a loved one, and (d) the contribution of internalworking models to general well-being. The results suggest that individuals withsecure working models of early attachment to their parents are more likely toperform caregiver functions and to perform them with less feeling of burden,less likely to experience prolonged and debilitating grief after the loss of a parentor partner, and more likely to report positively on their own well-being.

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One question that intrigues researchers is whether the proportion of peoplecategorized as securely attached changes across the life span. Two studies, onelongitudinal, have suggested that an increasing proportion of women (Klohnen& John, 1998) and participants of both sexes (Mickelson, Kessler, & Shaver,1997) have secure working models of attachment from their mid-20s to theirmid-50s. This optimistic view does not seem to continue into the later years.Studies using cross-sectional samples and questionnaire measures of attachment(e.g., Zhang & Labouvie-Vief, 2004) based on the items developed by Hazanand Shaver (1987), Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991), and Collins and Read,found that whereas a majority of the younger samples were classified as securelyattached in terms of romantic relationships, only 30% to 40% of the older samplewere in that category. The incidence of dismissing attachment rose over time,whereas preoccupied attachment fell off. None of these studies have includedmeasures of mechanisms that might help explain the declines in security ofattachment in old age, and none have demonstrated that the increase in insecureattachment is directly correlated with measures of maladaptation. Furthermore,no study that we are aware of has examined these questions using the AAI orother interview methods of assessing attachment.

UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND QUESTIONS

As with any theory and body of research, increasingly wider applications of theinitial work to new topics provide answers to some questions but leave newpuzzles. Here, we focus on seven unresolved issues, most of them concernedwith disconnections between the theory as it is currently used and the methodsand findings that have emerged over the last five decades.

IS ATTACHMENT BEST MEASURED AS A SET OFCATEGORIES OR CONTINUA?

The most central unresolved issue in attachment theory is whether attachmentshould be considered as a limited set of categories or a continuum based on oneor more dimensions. Acceptance of categorical measurement ties the researcherto several important conclusions about attachment as a theoretical construct.First, there is the obvious consequence that there are only as many differencesamong people as there are categories to describe them—in this case, no morethan five types of attachment-related behavioral strategies—in childhood andadulthood and in parent–child and couple relationships.

Second, statistical challenges to the categorical classification system ininfancy come most powerfully from Fraley and Spieker (2003), who analyzed

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protocols from the Strange Situation and the AAI to determine whether theobserver ratings fit the characteristics required of a taxonomic system. Fraleyand Spieker found, as did Roisman, Fraley, and Belsky (2007) in a study ofAAI protocols, that dimensional constructs rather than categorical constructsfit the data better. From a statistical point of view, a dimensional system hasadvantages in that it provides a larger range of scores and a correspondinglygreater probability of finding correlations with other continuous measures ofadaptation. For example, two studies using both categorical and dimensionalcoding of adult attachment interviews (Cowan, Cohn, Cowan, & Pearson, 1996)and couple attachment interviews (Cowan, Cowan, & Mehta, in press) havefound that continuous scores were more likely than categorical scores to becorrelated with observed interaction.

There is evidence that both categorical and continuous measures are meaning-ful ways of looking at attachment. In a study of 73 married couples withkindergarten-aged children (Alexandrov et al., 2005), hierarchical multipleregressions showed that all three continuous scores (secure, dismissing, pre-occupied) derived from the CAI made unique contributions to explainingvariance in marital satisfaction and observed marital interaction over and abovethe predictive power of categorical security of romantic attachment scores. Itseems likely that the categorical measures provide an overall assessment of anindividual’s general attachment strategy, whereas the continuous measures provideindexes of the relative strength of competing attachment behavioral systems.

ARE THERE MULTIPLE MODELS OF PARENT–CHILD OR COUPLEATTACHMENT AT A GIVEN TIME?

The notion of attachment as a unitary construct can be challenged by data on bothparent–child and couple attachments. We know that infants form attachmentsto both parents. Furthermore, the association between categories of attachmentto each parent is statistically significant but low (Fox, Kimmerly, & Schafer,1991). In addition to their biological parents, children develop attachments tocaretakers outside the family. Howes (1999) provided a general overview ofattachment issues for millions of children who receive care in multiple settingsfrom multiple caregivers. Sagi et al. (1995) described how Israeli children inkibbutzim form attachments to mothers, fathers, and the metapelets who care forthem regularly in a group living situation.

The fact that there can be multiple attachments with different states of mindwith regard to the relationship with each person is ignored in the measurement ofadult attachment by the AAI in which, except for extreme discrepancies, attach-ments to mother and father are combined into one overall category. We foundonly one study that coded attachment with respect to mother and father separately

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(Furman & Simon, 2006). Furman and Simon found a 68% concordance in thissample of college students, which means that almost one third of the time theindividual would receive two different security scores when narratives about thetwo attachment figures were scored separately.

Researchers who are beginning to examine attachment in multiple relationshipcontexts (parents, partners, peers) find much more consistent correlations withother measures of adaptation within specific relationships than across relation-ships (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 2000). That is, security of attachment appears tobe a product of relationships with specific people, or specific types of people,and not a personality trait descriptive of the individual. Finally, as we notedpreviously, each person may have multiple attachment strategies with respect toa specific attachment figure (one’s partner; Alexandrov et al., 2005). In sum,then, despite the fact that studies have found strong correlations between singlemeasures of attachment and various outcomes, the evidence for a single overallworking model of attachment is weak. Evidence supporting a more differen-tiated multiple model approach is more persuasive. Even so, as in the questionof categorical and continuous attachment measures, the issue is not whether tochoose one or the other but how to integrate notions of generality and specificityin the attachment framework. More also needs to be learned about the inter-connections among attachment models based on different relationships and howthose different models influence each other in the course of development.

DOES EARLY ATTACHMENT TO A CAREGIVER OPERATE AS ATEMPLATE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTACHMENTS ACROSS

THE LIFE SPAN?

Bowlby (1988) was clear that attachments change over time, but he also wroteextensively about the possibility that the working model of attachment formedearly in life acted as a template or mold that shaped later working models ofparent–child and couple relationships. One source of support for the templatehypothesis would be evidence that there is high predictability from attachmentsecurity measured in infancy to attachment security in adulthood. Three longi-tudinal studies extending from infancy to adolescence or adulthood present amixed picture of such evidence. One investigation in the United States (Waters,Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, & Albersheim, 2000) found a strong (72%) associationbetween infant strange situation assessments and security of attachment measuredby the AAI when those infants were 20-year-old adults. A second U.S. study(Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005) in a higher risk sample found low tomoderate association between infant security of attachment and security measuredwith the AAI in adulthood, whereas a third study by Grossmann et al. (2002)in Germany found no association between infant and adult security of attachment.

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Another source of support for the template hypothesis would be high levelsof concordance between attachment to one’s parents and one’s partner. Thefindings suggest otherwise. When both adult attachment interviews and adultattachment questionnaires (focusing primarily on the couple) were coded incategories, the surprising conclusion was that the association between them waseither nonexistent or low (Crowell, Fraley, & Shaver, 1999, describing earlierwork). Cowan et al.’s (in press) data indicate that the low overall association mayhide a directional connection. When their working models of adult attachmentwere secure on the AAI, the vast majority of men and women in the Cowanet al. (in press) study (80%) had a secure model of attachment in relation tothe partner on the CAI. However, insecure attachments to parents were equallylikely to be associated with secure as with insecure attachments to a partner.These optimistic findings suggest that a number of individuals with insecureattachment models with reference to their parents manage to construct a secureworking model of attachment to their romantic partner. Part of our challengewill be to understand how and for whom these shifts occur.

How do we explain the fact that the AAI and questionnaire measures ofattachment security are correlated with theoretically predictable measures ofadaptation but not correlated highly with each other? Differences in measurementmethods (interview vs. questionnaire) may play some role in the lack ofconnection. Another obvious explanation of the lack of concordance is thatthe two methods are focused on different relationships—with parents (AAI) orromantic partners (questionnaires).

A more dynamic possible explanation of the lack of correspondence betweenAAI and couple attachment measures is that individuals often actively seekintimate relationships that make up for what they lacked in the past, and someare lucky enough to find them. Without the template assumption, we need notconclude that the two models of attachment should be concordant, especially ifthe quality of interaction in these relationships is very different.

DOES ATTACHMENT CHANGE DEVELOPMENTALLY OVER TIME?

Cognitive developmental theories, at least since the time of Piaget (1967),provide convincing evidence that representation systems develop over time—becoming more differentiated and integrated as one moves from childhood toadulthood. This would suggest that as an internal representation, a workingmodel of attachment would change developmentally over time. Bowlby (1979)believed in developmental shifts in attachment from parent regulation throughdyadic regulation to self-regulation, but the implications of this statement haverarely been examined by attachment theorists, in part because they tend to

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adopt a “package” of positions on the unresolved issues we described previ-ously. If one assumes that attachment is a unitary category formed early andacting as a template that shapes future attachments, it would not seem necessaryto ask whether the internal representation system or the attachment behavioralsystem changes as children mature. Because we have questioned each of theseassumptions, we are more open to the possibility of a developmental trajectoryof attachment. The problem may have been compounded by the differentmeasurement techniques used at different developmental stages, which couldhide potential changes in the organization of attachment security. Now that thereare similar measures of attachment to parents from childhood (Target, Fonagy,& Shmueli-Goetz, 2003) to adulthood, it is time to examine these attachmentprotocols for evidence of structural developmental changes in attachment repre-sentations as children mature developmentally in other ways.

IS ATTACHMENT UNIVERSAL OR CULTURE-SPECIFIC?

Some of the beginning ideas of attachment theory were developed duringAinsworth’s (1967) study of mothers and infants in Uganda. Nevertheless, it tookseveral decades before concerted efforts were made to investigate attachmentcross-culturally. Although a majority of attachment studies are of Westerncultures, a few have taken place in Kenya, West Africa, Botswana, Zambia,China, and Japan. Because of limited space, we summarize some of the majorconclusions from these studies, guided by an excellent review by van Ijzen-doorn and Sagi (1999). Van Ijzendoorn and Sagi’s (1999) review begins withthe important comment that almost all cross-cultural studies of attachment areetic (applying Western constructs and methods to observations of non-Westerncultures) rather than emic (applying constructs and methods developed within aculture). Most of the cross-cultural comparisons have focused on infant–motherattachment. We are not aware of studies in non-Western cultures using the AAI,but a few have examined questionnaire measures of couple attachment.

An interesting controversy between Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, andMorelli (2000, 2001) and Posada and Jacobs (2001) illustrates the complexproblems in this research arena. The disagreement has to do with whetherthe connection found between maternal sensitivity and attachment in Westerncultures is found in other cultures. Rothbaum et al. (2000) argued that becauseJapanese and American cultures have such different views of maternal sensi-tivity and child security, there must be fundamental differences in attachmentin the two cultures. Posada and Jacobs responded that parenting sensitivity andchildren’s secure base behavior can be found in both countries and that measuresbased on careful ethological work in Japan also reveal correlations betweenmaternal sensitivity and child security. Nevertheless, as Posada and Jacobs were

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careful to state, expressions of both sensitivity and security have strong culturalcomponents. In part, the issue is one of level of analysis. At the most generallevel, there are instances of both constructs in all cultures. At the specific level,behaviors that represent the constructs may differ. In their studies of Anglo andPuerto Rican cultures, Harwood, Miller, and Irizarry (1995) also made the pointthat variations in the meaning of attachment behavior across cultures may notmean that the children in one culture are more or less securely attached.

Considerable discussion has emerged about differences among cultures in theproportion of infants judged to be securely attached. Compared with samples inthe United States and Western Europe where about 67% are securely attached,security of attachment ranges from 57% in Ainsworth’s (1967) Uganda study,through 65% to 69% in other African countries and China, to 80% in Israelikibbutzim with a family-based sleeping arrangement and 56% in kibbutzim witha communal sleeping arrangement (from Table 31.2 in van Ijzendoorn & Sagi,1999, p. 729). What seems much more variable is the proportion of infants withavoidantattachment (absent insomeAfricanandJapanesesamples)orwithresistantattachment (much higher than Western rates in some African, Israeli, and Japanesesamples). In our view, the issue of proportion of secure attachments in a populationrepresents what may be a cultural influence on the quality of parent–child relation-ships. Wide variation in this proportion does not refute the premise that attachmentprocesses are relevant to every culture studied so far. What is missing in thecross-cultural literature on attachment is a clear conceptual or empirical pictureof what might produce different distributions of attachment in different cultures.

Research on cultural influences on attachment could profitably expand in anumber of directions. It is remarkable that very little focus has been devotedto variations of culture, including socioeconomic status (SES), within NorthAmerican or other cultures. The fact that attachment is much more stable inmiddle class than in low-SES families (Weinfield, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2000)certainly suggests that this would be a fruitful area of exploration. Although thereis substantial research in different countries on adult attachment as measuredby the AAI and couple attachment as measured by questionnaire, we are awareof very little research on couple attachment beyond broadly described Westerncultures. This is an area in which more research is urgently needed.

In the early years of research on attachment, some investigators examined sexdifferences in attachment patterns but failed to find them. Nevertheless, becauseculture interacts with biological variables to produce noticeable differences in mostaspects of life, we are surprised that sex differences in attachment patterns arenot investigated systematically in studies in Western or non-Western countries.It is time to pay more attention to the way attachment develops in relationshipsbetween fathers and mothers and sons and daughters (see following).

We raise one final issue about the cultural context of attachment theory:Bowlby’s work (1953) emerged at a specific time (the postwar years), in middle

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to upper middle class surroundings, with a view of mothers as primary parentswho ought to stay home during their children’s early developmental years.Ainsworth and Wittig’s (1969) strange situation procedure seemed to emphasizethe negative reactions to mothers leaving sight of their young children. Despitethe fact that Ainsworth (1967) began her research in Uganda, her observa-tions were of tribes in which mothers had sole childrearing responsibility. Theassumption seemed to be that the theory that emerged was universal, but this iscertainly debatable.

WHAT CAN A FAMILY SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVEAND OTHER CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORKS ADD

TO THE THEORY’S EXPLANATION OF HOW ADAPTATIONIS TRANSMITTED ACROSS GENERATIONS?

Bowlby’s assumption (1988) and that of many subsequent attachment theoristsis that the intergenerational link between mothers’ or fathers’ working models ofattachment to their parents and their children’s attachment to them occurs throughthe quality of the parent’s interaction with the child. There is some supportfor this hypothesis (van IJzendoorn, 1992) in that adult attachment security iscorrelated with observed warmth and an authoritative parenting style (warmth,responsiveness, limit setting, and age-appropriate maturity demands).

How does one explain the fact that parents’ working models of attachment orstate of mind regarding attachment are correlated with their parenting styles? Theinterpretation typically given to this intergenerational pattern is that a workingmodel of attachment, established early in life and continuing over time, functionsas a template that guides parents’ expectations and behavior when they playwith and discipline their offspring. As we have shown, the evidence for thishypothesis is equivocal at best.

Attachment in the Context of the Family as a System

We believe that attachment theory can benefit from drawing on research andtheory outside the boundaries of parent–child dyads. Specifically, Cowan (1997)and others (Byng-Hall, 1999; Marvin & Stewart, 1990) have proposed a familysystems view of attachment. This view goes beyond the inclusion of fathers to aconsideration of how the working models of each family member affect and areaffected by patterns we observe in family dyads, triads, and the family as a whole.

If the security of a child’s attachments to mother and to father is correlatedat a low level (Fox et al., 1991), it seems obvious to us that researchers mustinclude both parents in studies of attachment relationship effects on children’sdevelopment. It follows, then, that there are at least two working models of

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parent–child attachment that may influence parent–child relationships in intact,separated, and divorced families and those mislabeled as single-parent familieswhen there are two unmarried parents in the household (McLanahan, 2002).Although there is weak evidence of assortative mating in that adults with secureattachments to their parents more often marry partners with secure attachments,the correlation between partners’ attachment styles is statistically significant butlow (van IJzendoorn, 1995).

A couple relationship perspective may help to explain both the correspondenceand lack of correspondence between each parent’s working model of parent–child attachment and their parenting style as we observe it. In a study of 27couples who were parents of young children, Cohn, Silver, Cowan, and Cowan(1992) found that pairs in which both partners had secure working models ofadult attachment on the AAI showed more warmth and less conflict duringa coparenting task than pairs in which both partners had insecure workingmodels. The more unexpected finding occurred in pairs in which the husbandwas categorized as having a secure attachment model, whereas his wife wascategorized as having an insecure model based on their AAI responses about theirparents. In these secure–insecure couples, the parents were as positive in theirinteraction as coparents as the secure–secure couples were—and the insecurewives’ parenting when they worked with the child alone was as positive as thatof wives in the secure–secure couples. Cohn et al. interpreted the results assupporting the idea that men’s model of attachment protected their wives againstthe risks associated with insecure attachment.

In that small study, because there were only two couples in which the reversewas true—husbands described as having insecure adult attachment married towives with a secure model—it was not possible to compare parenting styles inthat couple arrangement. Data from a second, larger study of 76 families byCowan, Bradburn, and Cowan (2005) replicated the positive effects for securehusbands married to insecure wives and found that wives’ secure model ofattachment (AAI) did not buffer husbands’ insecurity in the same way; theinteraction between the husbands with insecure models married to wives withsecure models revealed even higher levels of conflict than couples in which bothpartners had insecure working models of attachment on the AAI.

The Integration of Models of Attachment and Family Risk

Cowan, Cowan, and Mehta (in press) recently examined data from the familiesin the second, larger study using path models to describe links between familyrisks and child outcomes. These analyses revealed that continuous scores fromthe AAI narratives were correlated with the continuous prototype scores from theCAI narratives. In turn, couple attachment security on the CAI was correlatedwith observed couple interaction—in a problem-solving discussion of a marital or

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parenting problem and during a coparenting task when their child was faced withdifficult tasks. The couple interaction was also strongly related to both father’sand mother’s authoritative parenting styles as individuals when each one helpedthe child with difficult tasks. All of these variables together explained 33% ofthe variance in the children’s internalizing behavior and 47% of the variance intheir externalizing behavior as reported by their first-grade teachers and 20% ofthe variance in academic achievement scores on individually administered tests.Parent–child attachment, couple attachment, and observed family interaction allcontributed unique variance to predictions of the children’s school adaptation.

Similar patterns of linkage from working models of parent–child and coupleattachment, to observed family processes, to child outcomes were found in astudy of mothers and infants by Dickstein, Seifer, and Albus (in press). Theseresults suggest that expansion of the attachment paradigm to include both insider(working models) and outsider (observations) perspectives on the whole familymay help to explain how attachment security in both parents becomes associatedwith their child’s development and adaptation.

Investigators who focus on measures of attachment and parenting do nottypically examine sex differences in the transmission of attachment patterns.Cowan et al.’s (2005) results suggest that mothers’ insecure models of adultattachment are more likely to be associated with internalizing behavior intheir daughters, whereas fathers’ insecure models are more likely to beassociated with externalizing behavior in their sons’ and daughters’ adaptation toschool.

We suggest three additional questions to be answered in a family systemscontext of attachment. First, how does attachment play out in nonbiologicalfamilies, especially those formed as a consequence of maltreatment in the infant’sbirth family? Interesting work by Steele et al. (2007) begins to address thisimportant topic. Second, beyond the dyad, is there a family-level conceptual-ization of attachment in which the family as a system provides a secure base for itsmembers as suggested by Byng-Hall (1999)? Third, which family factors shapedifferent life-span trajectories of attachment from childhood to adulthood—andwhat protects individuals from finding that others cannot be expected to respondor from feeling that they are not lovable?

CAN ATTACHMENT THEORY BE HELPFUL TO PARENTSAND THERAPISTS?

Guidance for Parents

Ideas from attachment theory have been incorporated into popular guides forparents (e.g., Brazelton, 1992; Pruett, 2000). Although none of the authors ofthese guides subject their recommendations to empirical test, it seems hard to

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argue with the idea that encouraging parents to be warm, sensitive, and responsiveto their young children would result in benefits for children’s development,with one cautionary note. Baumrind’s (1979) theory of authoritative parentingindicates that warmth alone is not enough; children also benefit emotionally,socially, and cognitively from parents’ providing age-appropriate structuring oftasks and setting limits. Without these aspects of parenting style, the emphasis ofattachment theorists on parental sensitivity could lead to a style that Baumrindcalled “permissive,” which is linked to less optimal developmental outcomes.

An enduring controversy, generated in part by attachment theorists’ emphasison the importance of early mother–child bonds, is whether mothers who workoutside the home are placing their children at risk for insecure attachment and itsassociated consequences. Because more than half of contemporary mothers of 1-year-olds now work outside the home, and most children have some out-of-homecare before they enter kindergarten, this is a pressing social issue. Examining themost current research (see Belsky et al., 2007), we conclude that (a) participationin day care alone does not elevate the risk of children’s insecure attachment;(b) compared with children of stay-at-home mothers, children in day care maybe at an advantage in cognitive abilities, although young children who spendlong hours (more than 20 per week) in day care are at slightly higher risk foraggressive behavior; and (c) the quality of both the parent–child relationshipsand the day care setting explains more of the variation in children’s adaptationthan the fact or number of hours of day care. In our view, there are no data tosupport the prevalent concern that when both parents work outside the home andchildren spend time in day care, there is a risk of disturbed attachment or othernegative outcomes for young children. Furthermore, the low risk of negativeconsequences to children must be balanced against other risks associated withlow family income and the necessity of both parents working.

Guidance for Therapists

Attachment therapists who treat young children often work with families inwhich there has been trauma, abuse, severe deprivation, or family disruptionthrough divorce, adoption, or foster parenting. Although reactive attachmentdisorder has been identified in the American Psychiatric Association’s (1994)Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.), attachmentdifficulties range from this severe category through disorganized attachment andthrough the organized but insecure attachment strategies described in normaldevelopment. With children in the severely disturbed or moderate risk categories,therapists tend to treat mother and child together (Dozier, 2003; Erickson,Korfmacher, & Egeland, 1992; Hoffman, Marvin, Cooper, & Powell, 2006;Lieberman, 2002) using verbal and video feedback on moments of interactionto help the parent become a better observer and a more responsive, effective

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attachment figure. There is beginning evidence, although not from randomizedclinical trials, that these interventions have positive effects. Treatment of adoles-cents in an attachment framework often involves helping both adolescent andparent dispel the myth that adolescence is a time of separation and showing thegenerations how to negotiate a better balance between autonomy and connection(Moretti & Holland, 2003).

There have been two important lines of work on attachment and couplestherapy. The first emerged at the Tavistock Clinic in London where Bowlbyspent most of his professional life. A marital studies unit, now called theTavistock Centre for Couples Therapy, helps the couple to establish a partnershipthat will provide a secure base for the individual partners (Clulow, 2001).Achieving this goal typically involves working with partners to clarify how theirworking models of intimate relationships, influenced by two different familiesof origin, lead to conflicting strategies of expressing or withholding emotion.By contrast, North American couples therapies emphasizing attachment, such asemotion-focused therapy (Johnson, 2004), pay special attention to the quicklyshifting ebb and flow of transactions between partners during moments inwhich one or both are experiencing an “attachment injury”—a lack of under-standing or an abandonment in time of need. In these approaches, attachment-oriented therapists attempt to follow Bowlby’s (1988) recommendations toprovide a secure base for exploration of the issues and to try strategies thathave the potential to lead to the creation of revised working models of intimaterelationships rather than treat the problem as one of inadequate communi-cation skills, as cognitive behavioral couples therapists might (Baucom, Epstein,Rankin, & Burnett, 1996). For high-conflict couples, therapist’s interventionsare designed to deescalate each partner’s emotional distress and prevent theescalation of negative affect in partners whose instinct is to retaliate. Forcouples in a state of silent withdrawal, the therapist’s task is to encourage theexpression of withheld feelings at a safe and productive level. When couplesare mismatched in attachment style (Fisher & Crandell, 2001), the therapist canhelp partners to recognize and examine how each of their responses to pursueor withdraw may be based on their expectations and experiences in other keyrelationships.

Emotion-focused therapy (Johnson, 2004) has amassed evidence that couplesin an intervention fare better than those in a control group. We believe thatresearcher clinicians who attempt to validate attachment theory as a value-addedapproach to therapy need to identify how therapeutic interventions affect theattachment processes that the theory assumes are instrumental in producingpositive outcomes. Such systematic research is needed to provide guidelines fordesigning more effective interventions and is the only way to test claims thatattachment security or insecurity plays a causal role in individual, couple, andfamily adaptation.

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CONCLUSIONS

With the development of attachment theory, Bowlby and the investigators whofollowed him have contributed in substantive and methodological ways to thestudy of intimate relationships. We outlined extensions of this early study ofattachment across the life span from birth to old age, the latter still in a formativestage. We noted that as the theory developed, methods designed to measureattachment began to take center stage but were not always in harmony with thetheory. By pointing out how the theory and methods connect or fail to, we hopeto stimulate discussion of how the theory might be modified.

We outlined seven unresolved issues in attachment theory, acknowledgingthat the unresolved issues we chose to discuss are not the only important onesin the field. Along the way, we pointed to questions about sex differences inthe unfolding of attachment patterns as an important area for future exploration.In the couple relationship field, the focus has been almost entirely on hetero-sexual relationships. Studies of attachment in same-sex couples would add to ourknowledge and help us understand how gender and attachment shape intimaterelationships.

We hope that attempts to resolve the tensions associated with the unresolvedissues we have discussed will lead to a more differentiated and integrated versionof attachment theory, one that encompasses a more complex notion of workingmodels of multiple attachments that benefit from relationship experience. It isnot just the theory that needs modifying. Procedures for measuring attachmentwill benefit from modifications that incorporate the new ideas and match the day-to-day complexities that each of us face as we manage our intimate relationshipswith friends, lovers, parents, and children throughout our lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This article has benefited immensely from the extensive comments made by sixanonymous reviewers and by the editor of the Special Issue, and we thank themfor the stimulating interchange.

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