In the course of daily transactions, caregivers and children construct internal working models of self and other in the attachment relationship (Bowlby, 1969). The function of such working models is to guide an individual's own behavior toward the attachment partner and to interpret and forecast the partner's behavior. So far, however, research on internal working models has largely focused on attachment from the filial rather than the parental perspective even when adults were studied. To remedy this situation, 36 middle-class mothers were interviewed regarding their attachment relationship with their 25-month-old children. Attachment-relevant interview questions were open-ended, allowing the mothers to produce their own descriptive categories. The interview took about an hour. Two analyses were performed on the interview transcripts: a content analysis of specific attachment themes and a global evaluation of attachment quality as conveyed by the interview text as a whole. The content analysis provided interesting findings regarding mother-child affect communication, mother-child separation, and autonomy negotiations. For the global analysis a sensitivity/insight scale was applied to the interview text. This scale was significantly correlated with other attachment measures for the same children at 18 months (Strange Situation), 25 months (Waters &Deane Q-sort), and 37 months (Separation-Reunion Procedure, Attachment Story Completion Task). The sensitivity/insight scale was also significantly and meaningfully correlated with maternal and questionnaire data regarding infant temperament, maternal personality and family climate. In sum, the Parent Attachment Interview provides new insights into parental experiences of the attachment relationship and can also serve as an alternative or additional measure of attachment quality.
Bretherton et al. (Sun,) studied this question.