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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Social position, early deprivation and the development of attachment
Stephen Stansfeld1, Jenny Head, Mel Bartley
1Centre for Psychiatry, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, Old Anatomy Building, Charterhouse Square, London EC1 6QM, UK. s.a.stansfeld@qmul.ac.uk
Abstract:
The effects of childhood social adversity on developing parent/child attachments may partially explain the effects of less advantaged childhood social position on adulthood mental health. Associations between social position, retrospectively recalled parental style and childhood emotional and physical deprivation and attachment were examined in 7,276 civil servants from the Whitehall II Study. Depressive symptoms were associated with insecure attachment style. Social position was not associated with attachment styles. However, fathers' social class was strongly associated with material and emotional deprivation. In turn, deprivation was associated with lower parental warmth. High parental warmth was associated with decreased risk of insecure attachment styles. Despite the methodological shortcomings of retrospective childhood data the results suggest material and emotional adversity influence the development of attachment through parental style, notably parental warmth.
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