Abstract
In view of the centrality of child-mother attachment to child well-being and in the context of the increasing participation of ethnically diverse groups in non-maternal care settings in the United States the purpose of this study was to investigate the contribution of ethnicity to toddler-mother attachment and identify the combination of non-maternal care and child and familial factors that best predict the development of attachment. A sub-sample of 817 Euro-American, African-American, and Hispanic 24-month-olds participating in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care was used. Small yet significant differences in toddler’s attachment to their mothers as measured by the Attachment Q-Set (Waters & Deane, 1985) were associated with child ethnicity as indicated by Analysis of Variance. According to Post-Hoc comparisons using the Tukey test, Euro-American and Hispanic toddlers were observed to be more securely attached that African-American toddlers. No significant differences between Euro-Americans and Hispanics were found. Using a general lineal model, maternal sensitivity, social support, child gender, and African-American ethnicity were significant predictors of attachment. Higher levels of maternal sensitivity and perceptions of social support, as well as being a girl predicted more secure attachment; being African-American predicted less secure attachment. Furthermore, the relationship between social support and attachment was significantly moderated by toddler ethnicity and gender. Specifically, increasing levels of social support predicted more secure attachment among Euro-American boys. Although the amount of variance in toddler-mother attachment explained by these models was modest, the results of this study suggest that family factors and processes may exert more influence on toddler-mother attachment relationship than the non-maternal care factors available for examination. Cultural variations in parenting behavior and socialization goals as well as limitations of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care data set are suggested as factors that may explain these results.
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