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Maternal anxiety, behavioral inhibition, and attachment

Joan Stevenson-Hinde1, Anne Shouldice, Rebecca Chicot

  • 1Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, University of Cambridge, UK. jgs11@cam.ac.uk

Attachment & Human Development
|April 21, 2011
PubMed

In a community sample of mothers (N = 763), 46% rated their anxiety above a "normal" range compared with only 15% for depression. Mothers without a partner had significantly higher anxiety (but not depression) than those with a partner. In a subsample of intact families with 1-3 children and mothers selected for low, medium, or high anxiety levels (N = 98), their 4.5-year-olds were observed for behavioral inhibition (BI) and attachment. Although ratings of maternal anxiety (MA) and BI were each significantly negatively correlated with ratings of attachment security, regression analyses showed MA as the only significant predictor. With patterns of attachment, only the Ambivalent group had significantly high levels of both BI and MA. When regression slopes of BI against MA were compared for each attachment group, the Ambivalent group differed significantly from the rest. Further analyses suggest that a child with high BI may be particularly vulnerable to MA, resulting in an Ambivalent attachment.

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