Children's relationships with child care teachers: stability and concordance with parental attachments

In order to examine caregiving relationships of children enrolled in childcare, two longitudinal samples of children, n = 72 and n = 106, were followed from infancy through preschool. Maternal attachment as assessed by the Strange Situation, 4-year-old reunion behavior, and by the Attachment Q-Set tended to be stable across time. Children's teacher-child relationship quality, as measured by the Attachment Q-Set, was stable if the teacher remained the same. When the teacher changed, teacher-child relationship quality tended to be unstable until the children were 30 months old. After 30 months, relationship quality with teachers tended to be stable regardless of whether or not the teacher changed. Maternal and teacher relationships were nonconcordant. There were few interactions between adult caregiver relationship quality and age of entry into child care or intensity of child care.