title: A secure base in adolescence: markers of attachment security in the mother-adolescent relationship.
abstract: This study sought to identify ways in which adolescent attachment security, as assessed via the Adult Attachment Interview, is manifest in qualities of the secure base provided by the mother-adolescent relationship. Assessments included data coded from mother-adolescent interactions, test-based data, and adolescent self-reports obtained from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of moderately at-risk 9th and 10th graders. This study found several robust markers of adolescent attachment security in the mother-adolescent relationship. Each of these markers was found to contribute unique variance to explaining adolescent security, and in combination, they accounted for as much as 40% of the raw variance in adolescent security. These findings suggest that security is closely connected to the workings of the mother-adolescent relationship via a secure-base phenomenon, in which the teen can explore independence in thought and speech from the secure base of a maternal relationship characterized by maternal attunement to the adolescent and maternal supportiveness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville 22904-4400, USA. allen@virginia.edu
authors.forename: Joseph P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.forename: Kathleen Boykin
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: McElhaney
authors.forename: Deborah J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Land
authors.forename: Gabriel P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Kuperminc
authors.forename: Cynthia W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: O'Beirne-Kelly
authors.forename: Sarah Liebman
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Kilmer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D012649:Self Concept; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors