Abstract

This research has two purposes: a) to evaluate the concordance between parental attachment models and children attachment patterns, b) to compare the resulting data with other reference samples through an intracultural and intercultural comparison using a meta-analytic procedure. Method: 201 parents were recruited ad assessed through the AAI and 144 children were observed with the SSP at 12 and 18 months. Results: Data showed a high correlation between parents and children attachment models (86% with mothers, 91% with fathers). The intracultural comparison showed a higher proportion of children with Secure attachment patterns and a lower proportion of children with Insecure-Ambivalent and Disorganized-Disoriented pattern. The crosscultural comparison revealed differences in the distribution of mother-child attachment with regard to the Insecure-avoidant pattern, more prevalent our sample children. Otherwise, with respect to father-child attachment, we found a higher rate of Secure attachment patterns and a lower rate of Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Ambivalent and Insecure-Disorganized-Disoriented patterns. Conclusions: this study offers a contribution to intracultural and intercultural research on maternal, paternal and child models of attachment, investigating the attachment transmission with respect to both parental figures, aspect that has been poorly explored by Italian studies.