title: Mothers' attachment security predicts their children's sense of God's closeness.
abstract: The current research reports that mothers' security of attachment predicts their children's sense of God's closeness. A total of 71 mother-child dyads participated (children's M age = 7.5). Mothers' attachment organization was studied with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003 ) and their religiosity and attachment to God were measured with questionnaires. Children were told stories about visually represented children in attachment-activating and attachment-neutral situations, and placed a God symbol on a felt board to represent God's closeness to the fictional children. Children of secure mothers placed the God symbol closer (d = .78) than children of insecure mothers across both types of situations, suggesting that children's experiences with secure-insecure mothers generalize to their sense of God's closeness. Also, girls (but not boys) placed the God symbol closer in attachment-activating than in attachment-neutral situations, giving partial support for an attachment normative God-as-safe-haven model. Finally, mothers' religiosity and attachment to God were unrelated to child outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bari University, Italy. cassibba@psico.uniba.it
authors.forename: Rosalinda
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cassibba
authors.forename: Pehr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Granqvist
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Costantini
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002668:Child Rearing / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D009769:Object Attachment; D011594:Psychometrics; D036301:Qualitative Research; D029181:Spirituality; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires