title: Earned-secure attachment status in retrospect and prospect.
abstract: Past research with the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview demonstrates that retrospectively defined earned-secures (who coherently describe negative childhood experiences) parent as effectively as do continuous-secures (who coherently describe positive childhood experiences), but manifest liabilities in the form of depressive symptomatology. This article presents data from a 23-year longitudinal study that replicate and extend prior research, testing a key premise that earned-secures so defined actually have a history of insecure attachments that change over time and/or endure consistently harsh or ineffective parenting in their youth. Discrepant with assumptions, retrospective earned-secures were not more likely than continuous-secures to have been anxiously attached in infancy and were observed in childhood and adolescence to have encountered among the most supportive and structured maternal parenting in a high-risk sample. Prospectively defined earned-secures (operationalized using participants' infant attachment classifications) did indeed go on to have success in their close relationships, many without reporting relatively high levels of internalizing distress in adulthood.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA. roism001@tc.umn.edu
authors.forename: Glenn L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Roisman
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Padrón
authors.forename: L Alan
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Sroufe
authors.forename: Byron
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Egeland
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008016:Life Change Events; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D010553:Personality Development; D019962:Reactive Attachment Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D012059:Rejection, Psychology; D012944:Social Support