SELF-CARE: Is My Attachment Style Affecting My Parenting? + FREE Relationship Conflict Decoder

If you’re a parent, I want you to take a quick trip down memory lane and answer this question for me:

Before you had kids, was there something that your parents did that you swore you would never do with your own kids?

For example, maybe you told yourself that you would never ignore your kids’ requests, let stress about your own problems take attention away from them, compare them to siblings or cousins, or discourage them from pursuing their interests.

But now that you’re a parent, you might be realizing that as much as you told yourself that you would never be the kind of parent or caregiver that your mom, dad, or grandmother was, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Recently, I’ve chatted with you about attachment styles and how they affect your current close relationships, such as your romantic and non-romantic relationships with other adults.

But what if you’re the parent of a kid or adolescent? How does your attachment style influence your relationship with them and, in particular, how you parent them?

Keep reading below.

Because in this post, I break down how your own attachment style can affect the way you parent your kids.

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Attachment Theory Is NOT Attachment Parenting

Before we dive into talking about how your attachment style shapes your parenting, I want to clear up a common misconception: that attachment theory is the same thing (or related to) attachment parenting. Hint: it’s not.

If you became a parent during the last few decades, you might have heard about an approach called attachment parenting. Attachment parenting is a parenting philosophy that was developed by William and Martha Sears. It claims that when parents implement seven key practices with their babies (i.e., birth bonding, breastfeeding, baby wearing, cosleeping, belief in the baby’s cry, balance, and avoiding baby trainers), it helps them form close, warm relationships with them.

Attachment theory, in comparison, is a scientific theory that’s backed by decades of research. It suggests that the way that parents or caregivers pay attention to and respond to a child’s needs shapes the child’s bond with them and their broader understanding of close relationships.

It’s true that some attachment parenting principles encourage parents and caregivers to respond to a baby’s needs. But as a whole, attachment parenting isn’t a recipe or formula for creating secure attachment in a child. It was developed based on the experiences that Sears and Sears had with their own children and the children they interacted with in their pediatric practice and on anthropological data on indigenous childrearing. To date, there’s no evidence that attachment parenting is linked to the development of secure attachment in children.

So although attachment parenting contains the word “attachment,” it’s not the same thing as the scientific concept of attachment.

So How Does Your Attachment Style Influence Your Parenting?

Especially if there are things that your parents or caregivers did that you really didn’t like as a child, you might have been set on being a different type of parent when it came time to have kids of your own.

But what we know from research is that our childhoods play a big role in shaping the types of parents or parent figures we are today. And in particular, the type of attachment that we formed to our own parent or caregiver is highly related to the type of attachment that our child (or a child in our care) forms to us.

Why?

Because most of us learn how to parent by watching other people parent. And what’s the parenting model that we were probably exposed to the most in our life? The one displayed by our own parents or caregiver.

Our own relationship with our parent or caregiver formed our understanding or “template” of how relationships work and what we can expect from them. So when it came time to form a relationship with our own child or a child we’re caring for, we unconsciously applied this same template.

Even though many of us do it without realizing it, we can, therefore, end up parenting in ways that are very similar to how our parents or caregivers parented us. In other words, when we parent, we can end up reproducing the same patterns or habits that our parents or caregivers used with us, including the habits and patterns that defined how they responded to our needs.

So what does this mean?

It means that if our parents or caregivers responded to us in a way that promoted the development of a secure attachment style in us, we may be more likely (but not guaranteed) to parent in a similar way and promote the development of a secure attachment style in our kids. In comparison, if our parents or caregivers responded to us in a way that promoted the development of an anxious or avoidant attachment style, for example, we may be more likely (but not guaranteed) to parent in a way that promotes the development of an anxious or avoidant attachment style, respectively, in our kids.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into how each of the four attachment styles shape parenting:

Parents With Secure Attachment

Adults who are securely attached tend to be reliable, responsive, predictable, and consistent in relationships. They are also able to effectively regulate their emotions while responding to the needs of others with empathy. And on top of all of this, they likely became securely attached because they had parents who responded to their needs consistently and accurately and modeled this type of parenting for them.

Because securely attached adults witnessed parenting that was responsive to a child’s needs and tend to be reliable and responsive themselves, they are likely to be responsive as parents to the needs of their own kids.

In other words, parents who are securely attached are more likely to…

• be present and involved in the lives of their kids
• attuned and responsive to their physical and emotional needs
• comfort them when they are upset
• make them feel safe and secure
• support them in talking about their thoughts and emotions

These parenting behaviors promote the development of secure attachment in children.

Note that even if you have a secure attachment style and do your best to engage in the parenting behaviors listed above, you likely won’t be attuned to your kids’ needs 100% of the time. This is normal because no parent can be responsive to their kids’ needs all day long every single day; it simply isn’t realistic for any parent.

It’s also okay to not be 100% responsive because kids don’t need this to develop a secure attachment style. What matters is that you respond to your kids’ needs accurately and compassionately MOST of the time. This teaches kids that they can generally rely on you for love, care, and comfort.

Parents With Anxious Attachment

Adults with an anxious attachment style are more likely to question their self-worth, need frequent reassurance about their worth from loved ones, and have trouble respecting boundaries. They also likely became anxiously attached because their parents responded to their needs inconsistently. That is, they witnessed parents who were sometimes attuned and responsive to a child’s needs but sometimes not. These characteristics and experiences shape the parenting of anxiously attached adults.

Specifically, because people with an anxious attachment style witnessed parents who responded to their kids inconsistently, they are more likely to replicate these parenting behaviors with their own kids.

In addition, because anxiously attached adults are more likely to struggle with their self-esteem and look to others for validation, emotional hunger may play a key role in their parenting behaviors. Emotional hunger refers to the tendency for parents to seek emotional or physical closeness with their child for the sake of satisfying their own needs rather than the child’s needs.

For example, emotional hunger might lead a parent to be excessively close with their child (even to the point of smothering them) not for the sake of expressing love and care for the child but because the closeness satisfies their own need for love. Similarly, it might prompt a parent to praise and brag about their child in front of others for the sake of boosting their own self-esteem, rather than to promote high self-esteem and confidence in the child.

Because anxiously attached parents may sometimes be able to focus on their kids’ needs but get distracted by their own needs at other times, they can end up responding to their kids’ needs inconsistently. When kids experience this inconsistency in responsiveness over time, they learn that they can’t always rely on their parent to love and care for them when they need it. This sets the stage for kids to develop an anxious attachment style themselves.

Parents With Avoidant Attachment

Adults who are avoidantly attached likely had parents who fulfilled their physical needs but weren’t responsive to their emotional needs. This taught them that the best way to approach relationships was to be independent, take care of their own needs, and avoid emotional closeness with others. It also probably made them uncomfortable about depending on others emotionally and having people depend on them emotionally.

Because adults with an avoidant attachment style witnessed parenting that wasn’t emotionally responsive and tend to struggle with emotional closeness themselves, it’s typically harder for them to be emotionally responsive toward their own kids. They may have trouble understanding how to respond to their kids emotionally, find it more difficult to empathize with their kids, and even feel overwhelmed by their kids’ emotions. On top of this, they may be more likely to believe that kids should be independent and self-sufficient from an early age, expect kids to act “tough” in the face of adversity, discourage emotional expression, or even become angry when their kids express emotions.

Parents who are avoidantly attached may, therefore, frequently meet their kids’ physical needs but struggle to be attuned and responsive to their emotional needs. This increases the likelihood that their own kids will develop an avoidant attachment style as well.

Parents With Disorganized Attachment

Adults with a disorganized attachment style likely experienced parenting that was tumultuous, erratic, or inconsistent and may have been exposed to abuse, trauma, or neglect in childhood (either directly or indirectly). As a result, they can be volatile, unpredictable, explosive, and even violent in relationships. They also tend to struggle to form healthy close relationships.

Because people with a disorganized attachment style witnessed parenting that was inconsistent, tumultuous, and potentially abusive, they may be more likely to parent in a similar way when responding to their own kids’ needs. This may only be compounded by the fact that these parents learned to be erratic in relationships, volatile, and uncomfortable with emotional closeness. Ultimately, this increases the likelihood that their own kids will develop a disorganized attachment style too.

You Aren’t Doomed to Pass Down Your Attachment Style

As you can see, our attachment styles don’t just shape the relationships we have with other adults. They can also influence our parenting, the way we bond with our kids (or kids in our care), and the attachment style that our kids develop.

This is because the parenting that is modelled for us before we have kids plays a role in “teaching” us (even on an unconscious level) how to be parents. And the models of parenting that we probably witnessed most frequently were the ones we experienced in our childhood homes with our own parents.

In addition, the way that we were parented by our own parents or caregivers shaped how we respond in relationships and how comfortable we feel about emotional closeness even today. If we were consistently loved, comforted when needed, and encouraged to express our emotions, we may have an easier time parenting kids in the same way. On the other hand, if we learned to question our self-worth, fear emotional closeness in relationships, or even respond erratically or explosively in them, we may carry these behaviors into our own parenting relationship with our children.

If you have an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style, this might seem discouraging.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Because first, having an insecure attachment style doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to parent in a way that’s going to foster an insecure attachment style in your kids. It simply increases the likelihood that you will.

And second, even if your insecure attachment style is shaping your parenting in ways that don’t serve your kids right now, it doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to parent this way forever and pass on an insecure attachment style to your kids. Instead, you can take steps to develop a more secure attachment style and ultimately change how you show up in your relationships with your kids (as well as with partners, friends, and family members). I’ll be digging into this very topic in my next post, so stay tuned for it.

An important part of developing a more secure attachment style is to understand your current attachment style and how it’s affecting your relationships, including the ones you have with your kids, today.

As I mentioned in my post on attachment styles and relationships, your attachment style is especially likely to influence your relationship behavior during times of relationship conflict. So examining how you respond to conflict in relationships can help you gain deeper insight into your attachment style. And I’ve created a resource to help you do just this: the Relationship Conflict Decoder.

Although I created the Relationship Conflict Decoder with romantic relationships in mind, you can also use it to gain clarity on how you approach conflict in other types of close relationships with adults.

And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.

Until next time!

Vera

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