Factors Associated with Parent-Adolescent Attachment Relationship Quality: A Longitudinal Study

Background: Attachment to parents during adolescence has been identified as an important indicator of psychosocial adaptation. However, the relative importance of the adolescents' behavior problems and the larger relational context likely to influence the quality of these relationships remains relatively underexplored. The present study aims to identify the factors associated with the quality of parent-adolescent attachment relationships and to establish their relative contributions. This study also tested, as a complementary objective, the invariance of the models according to sex. Method: 706 (46.9% girls) early adolescents participated in the study at time 1 and then again, two years later. The individual (e.g., behavior problems or temperament) and contextual (e.g., parents' behaviors, history of abuse or environment stability) associated factors were measured at time 1, while the quality of the parent-adolescent attachment relationship was measured at time 2. Results: The results showed that a history of emotional abuse, inconsistent discipline, externalized behavior problems and the adolescent's age were negatively associated with the global attachment security score, while internalized behavior problems and peer attachment were positively associated. These variables explained 15.7% of variance. The results also demonstrated that these variables were also associated with the specific dimensions of attachment (trust, communication, alienation). Discussion: The study demonstrates the importance of several relational variables in the development of the parent-adolescent attachment relationship.