Infant attachment security as a discriminant predictor of career development in late adolescence

This longitudinal study examined the predictive value of infant attachment security at I year for career development attitudes and educational aspirations at 18 years. Participants were drawn from an archived longitudinal study and assessed with Waters' Attachment e-ser through secondary analysis of infancy records. Career development attitudes at 18 years were rated from participant interviews. In addition, parental derogation and idealization at 18 years were assessed to examine the importance of concurrent parent-child relationship factors for career development. Regression analyses revealed that infant attachment explained variance in career development attitudes at 18 years, with secure orientations related to better career development outcomes. Parental idealization and derogation at 18 each explained unique variance in career development indices. As expected, correlational analyses revealed that infant attachment security was unrelated to participants' educational aspirations at 18 years.