In this international observational study, Strange Situation Procedures (SSP) of 229 parent-child dyads (from 115 families, including 16 families with a twin) were examined. This study fills an important knowledge gap: the gold-standard test for measuring attachment (the SSP) was never applied to these family types before.

Attachment Across Different Family Types

Between 2013 and 2016, researchers conducted the SSP with 12-month-old children and their parents. What did they find? There are no differences in attachment between children growing up in two-mother, two-father, or mother-father families who used ART.

The percentage of children showing a secure attachment (53.7%) aligns with the percentage of securely attached children in a large-scale global meta-analysis (51.6%). This suggests that children growing up in diverse family types are just as likely to form secure attachments as children in family types that, as far as is known, did not make use of ART.

Differences Between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom
The participants in this study were from the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. While attachment relationships appear similar across family types, the results of this study show that this is not always the case across countries: Dutch children are more often securely attached than children from the United Kingdom.

The researchers suggest that parents in the UK may have less time, support, or confidence to invest in a secure attachment relationship. This may be due to less favorable parental leave policies. Additionally, less positive attitudes toward same-sex parent families in the environment may play a role. These contextual differences in attachment relationships in these family types form an important direction for future research.

A Missing Piece in Attachment Research

Since 1978, the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) has been an important observational tool for assessing how children are attached to their parents. During this task, parents and their child are separated twice and reunited twice. Afterwards, their behaviors during the tasks are observed to assess how securely the child has attached to the parent.

Although this instrument is considered the gold standard for measuring attachment relationships in children, it is mainly used in heterosexual families and rarely in children in foster and adoptive families. Consequently, our understanding of attachment in other, more diverse family types is limited.

This makes this study particularly important, with a key conclusion: “Variations in family types—such as parental sexual orientation or the use of ARTs to conceive— are not inherently detrimental to early parent-child relationships or the development of secure attachments.”

More information? 

Get in contact with Dr Loes van Rijn-van Gelderen.