Child-Mother Attachment and the Self in Six-Year-Olds

Bowlby has proposed that child-parent attachment is important in the child's representation of self. In this study, the child's representation of self was examined in connection with child-mother attachment in a sample of 52 white, middle-class 6-year-olds. Children were seen in 2 play sessions, 1 month apart. Quality of attachment was assessed in each session based on the child's behavior on reunion following a laboratory separation of approximately 1 hour, using a system devised by Main and Cassidy. Aggregated attachment ratings and classifications were assigned based on the child's behavior in both reunions. Assessments of the self consisted of (a) assessment of the self within the relationship with the attachment figure (an incomplete doll stories procedure), (b) assessment of the child's perceptions of how an unspecified "other" views him or her (a puppet interview), (c) direct assessment of global self-esteem independent of the attachment relationship (the subscale of global self-esteem from Harter's Perceived Competence Scale for Children), (d) a second direct assessment of global self-esteem (an interview with the child), and (e) assessment of feelings of competence and acceptance in specific domains that may be precursors of self-esteem (Harter's Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children). Significant, albeit modest, connections between attachment and the self were established; furthermore, specific patterns of self-perceptions were related to particular patterns of attachment.