Parent–Youth Attachment Insecurity and Informant Discrepancies of Intrafamilial Aggression

TL;DR

This study explores how youth attachment styles affect how parents and children report aggression within families.

Contribution

The study introduces new insights into how attachment anxiety and avoidance influence discrepancies in aggression reports between youth and parents.

Findings

Youth attachment anxiety is linked to over-reporting aggression by youth relative to parents.

Attachment avoidance is associated with youth over-reporting parent-to-youth aggression.

Reported aggression is more strongly related at high levels of attachment anxiety.

Abstract

This study investigated how youth attachment anxiety and avoidance are associated with informant discrepancies of intrafamilial aggression within families where youth have clinically significant mental health challenges (N = 510 youth–parent dyads). Using polynomial regressions, we tested whether youth attachment avoidance and anxiety moderated the absolute magnitude of the association between youth- and parent-reports of aggression toward each other. Furthermore, difference scores were computed to test whether youth attachment was associated with the direction of youths’ reports of the frequency of aggression relative to parents (i.e., did youth under- or over-report). Dyads’ reports of youth-to-parent aggression were more strongly related at high than low levels of attachment anxiety. Results also revealed that youth attachment anxiety was associated with youth over-reporting of youth-to-parent and parent-to-youth aggression (relative to parents), whereas attachment avoidance was associated with youth over-reporting parent-to-youth aggression (relative to parents). These findings highlight the importance of understanding the source of informant discrepancies in social-emotional development and family functioning.

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