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Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most
- _wire_ 11mo agoSure, and to whom does a childhood friend first attach?
- cjbarber 11mo agoIndeed, title should perhaps be: The parents of your kids' friends shape the attachment style of your kids
- bonsai_spool 11mo agoIf you think this is true, why is the variance explained by the parents so low?
- oh_my_goodness 11mo agoVariance explained by friends was also very low, to be honest.
- lordnacho 11mo ago> But early friendship bonds played an even bigger part than maternal relationships in the ways people navigated adult friendships and romantic partnerships, accounting for 4 percent of the variance in adults’ romantic partner- and best friend-specific attachment anxiety, and 10 to 11 percent in their partner- and best friend-specific avoidance. Are those numbers r-squared figures? Seems like there's a lot more variance to be explained?
- dash2 11mo agoRight. It also suggests two possibilities: 1. Maybe the measurements are just very noisy. In which case they may also have other biases. 2. Maybe there are systematic causes which the study didn't capture. If so, controlling for them might change the results. Sigh. When I see a study headline like this I feel confident about two things. First, the study will have a weak design with no serious attention paid to causality, genetic confounding etc... second, the response to it will be full of people going "yes, that fits my N=1 anecdote" or "no that doesn't fit my N=1 anecdote", in other words, critiquing the weak methodology with an even weaker methodology (handwaving appeals to personal experience). One reason social science is hard is there isn't much market for the truth. People just want a nice story to tell themselves.
- pedalpete 11mo agoMy first reaction was to refute this, but I think I've convinced myself this may be correct, assuming attachment styles are the right frame. I've been painted with the Avoidant brush, and logically it makes sense, broken home, removed from mother, moved regularly changing schools once a year for 5 years. However, my siblings are the opposite. We come from the same house, they didn't change schools as often as I did, which made me wonder how we could be so different. But when looked through the lens of friendships forming the attachment style, it makes more sense. I changed schools more often than my siblings, and therefore had more friendship changes, and less ability for attachment.
- interroboink 11mo agoAlso, beware of taking generalities (such as the claims of this study) and applying that directly that to your specific life, or anyone else's. I mean, I like your comment and am glad you got thinking about this, but it's just a line of reasoning that I see a lot and I wish I saw less, so that's why I bring it up (: "True for most people" does not imply "true for me" or "true for that person over there". And the reverse is not valid either, of course - "true for me" does not imply "true for most people." There's always some tension between people's individual anecdotes and experiences (which are fascinating, and I like), and the claims of broader studies like this one. Sometimes I try to remind myself of this with the "on average, people have 2.3 children" factoid. Obviously, nobody actually has 2.3 children; the general truth does not necessarily apply to specific individuals; potentially not even a single one.
- pedalpete 11mo ago100% agree. I actually think of attachment styles like this generally. Your upbringing does not dictate your life, it influences.
- jcims 11mo agoSimilar story here. Six schools by seventh grade. I think it does mess with you a bit.
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- shalmanese 11mo agoWe've known roughly this since The Nurture Assumption (1998). Where parents do have an impact is in being able to choose the social circles their children are immersed in.
- maxerickson 11mo agoThe discussion of toddlers more or less code switching is quite interesting. Once they have a sense of self, even little kids will be very careful about revealing their home life to their school friends, and the same about school to their parents.
- brabel 11mo agoHaha I can see myself in that. I was terrified of my mom knowing what my school social life was like as I felt terribly embarrassed that some kids made fun of me and things like that.
- Terr_ 11mo agoPotentially worrisome news for the pandemic-isolation cohort, with their outlier experience.
- makeitdouble 11mo agoPotentially beneficial as well, if they had less toxicity and/or had stronger family bonds than otherwise. There's so many variable, I think we can only say they could be different, who knows if t will be for better or worse, or neither.
- sishabsb 11mo agoWhile technically correct, painting these outcomes as so close to equally likely that we can’t make a call is sinister. Locking people in their homes and away from social interactions for years amidst the background of a pandemic is almost certainly a net negative. We do similar things to violent prisoners, mentally insane, or humans we’re looking to break. There should be an extremely high risk for the next pandemic - not just boomers/obese dying a year or two earlier - to justify what we did to the world. Years of people’s lives taken.
- makeitdouble 11mo ago> We do similar things to violent prisoners, mentally insane, or humans we’re looking to break. That perception of prisons and mental wards is fundamentally broken IMHO. Perhaps that's how it's run in most of the US, but the base principal is reeducation and reform, not punishment. The core idea is to lock people away because keeping them around is a net negative, and bringing them back to society so they can reintegrate. Which is modeled after the educational system, because prisons is supposed to be reeducation, if you want to draw parallels. > Locking people in their homes and away from social interactions for years Did any country do that or intent to ? We had strict lockdowns and it was for weeks at most, with social interactions still allowed but at reduced scope (limiting the contact radius to a minimum of 10~15km or so) China famously was more heavy handed and the most it lasted was two month. > so close to equally likely that we can’t make a call is sinister. Humans are complex, and it rarely works the way we envision it, especially when it comes to social phenomenons. Think about the opposite natural experiment: people who can't go home and stay in a shelter and have to interact with hundreds of people for weeks. This is also an extremely traumatic event that countries with frequent natural disasters are working hard at solving.
- DFHippie 11mo agoIn general your kids' friends are much more important to them in the long run than you are. You are always there, but their friends represent the society they will be sinking or swimming in. They turn away from you and your tastes and opinions for a reason: their survival depends on understanding the tastes and opinions of their peers. You will stick with them (usually). Their peers are free to abandon them. Peer relationships are fragile but important. Parent-child relationships, however important, are much more durable, so they require less attention from the child.
- DFHippie 11mo agoTo elaborate a bit: your parenting is much more likely to affect how your kids parent their kids. And, for better or for worse, mostly what they'll be doing is avoiding the mistakes you made. Your mom was distant and judgmental? You'll be super attentive and supportive, assuming your kids need what you wanted. And quite likely you'll overshoot the mark and set up a pitfall your kids will avoid when it's their turn. And they will then overshoot the mark. The cycle of parenting. Hakuna Matata.
- KerrAvon 11mo agoIs this anecdata/personal folklore/"common sense" or is this based on science? It sounds like the former, tbh. Things tend to be more complex than this.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- arjie 11mo agoI suspect it's the former, but it doesn't seem outrageous (like all "common sense"). I think the hard part is to replicate the parts one's parents did right. Like IT, when someone gets things right, they're invisible. When they get things wrong, it seems like the only thing they ever did. This is part of why I want my children's grandparents involved as much as possible in their life. I need to \alpha \times \grandparents + (1 - \alpha) \times \parents my kids.
- ivansavz 11mo agoDirect link to study abstract: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001 PDF: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-79270-001.pdf https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-79270-001.pdf
- kappi 11mo agoduplicate post of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790575
- bonsai_spool 11mo agoHere’s another report that speaks with the researchers directly https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-childhood-relationships-affect-your-adult-attachment-style-according-to/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-childhood-rel... And the paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001
- voidfunc 11mo agoDidn't really have friends as a kid, probably explains why I prefer the cold glow of a computer.
- walterreid 11mo ago[dead]
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo agoKnow what you mean
- 64718283661 11mo agoSame, so what should one do if AI ruins it? It hasn't yet. It's not good enough, but with the amount of money pouring in I think it could be cracked within 5 years. I hope not.. Coding with AI ruins the enjoyment. And willfully falling behind others using tools to be better than anyone without it isn't good either. I enjoy computers because my skill level is high enough that I can make money on my own and do what I want by using my skills to beat competitors. My research and experiments are meaningful because it is not all so trivial and instantly replicable yet.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo agoGet a 6502 acorn and write assembly
- Aeolun 11mo agoNot sure this is generalizable. I had lots of friends as a kid. Still prefer the computer :)
- makeitdouble 11mo agoOn the participants composition: > 705 participants and their families over 3 decades, from the time participants were infants until they were approximately 30 years old (Mage = 28.6, SD = 1.2; 78.7% White, non-Hispanic, 53.6% female, 46.4% male). It looks like an a fairly culturally homogeneous pannel, it would be interesting to also have a breakdown on religion (especially due to the communal effects) and income.
- makeitdouble 11mo agoFrom https://psycnet.apa.org/manuscript/2026-79270-001.pdf https://psycnet.apa.org/manuscript/2026-79270-001.pdf The income data: ------------------------------ Student status Part-time 34 (4.9%) Full-time 61 (8.7%) Employment Part-time, for pay 85 (12.1%) Full-time, for pay 516 (73.7%) Individual income <US $10,000 78 (11.1%) US $10,000–$29,999 167 (23.9%) US $30,000–$49,999 179 (25.6%) US $50,000–$99,999 213 (30.4%) US $100,000+ 63 (9.0%) Household income <US $20,000 75 (10.8%) US $20,000–$49,999 163 (23.5%) US $50,000–$99,999 248 (35.7%) US $100,000–$149,999 126 (18.1%) US $150,000+ 83 (11.9%)
- djmips 11mo agoI've observed children who have had tremendous close friends in childhood but were unable to recreate that in adulthood. Sometimes it's easier to make friends when you're 5.
- herpdyderp 11mo agoI'd still rather be friends with a bunch of 5 year olds. (Unfortunately everyone would probably think that's super creepy.)
- kayodelycaon 11mo agoIt’s really sad that that’s considered creepy. I got a lot of flak for going to a high school play in my late twenties. I had played D&D with the kid and his mom every week for years. He was great to hang out with when he was 14.
- ryandrake 11mo agoThe whole country is engrossed in a decade+ long "pedo panic" to the point where you can't support a friend's kid by attending a school play, take them for ice cream, or (sometimes) even take your own child to the park without getting the side-eye from nosey nobodies.
- Aeolun 11mo agoKids in that age range are uncomplicated. The only thing they really desire is that you play with them. They just don’t consider anything beyond that. But it seems hard for many adults to play with children, so it becomes this anomalous thing, even though I’m fairly certain it’s just something we’ve convinced ourselves adults “don’t do”. Tag is still fun, whether you are 7 or 37.
- 0_____0 11mo agoThere's a joke here... Q: How do you make friends in Boston? A: Same way everyone else does. In kindergarten.
- kayodelycaon 11mo agoI think it’s a bit more general than that because I didn’t have any “childhood friends”, just bullies who were never punished. What I did have was a great number of excellent adults in my life. In many ways, they were more my peers than anyone my own age. Their example and support made my parents instruction significantly more effective despite the serious challenges with my mental health that they didn’t know how to handle.
- CTDOCodebases 11mo agoI think it just boils down to who did you experience strong emotion with and what are/were the outcomes of that relationship.
- taurath 11mo agoNo, one study doesn’t upend the last few decades of understanding of emotional attachment. The study simply says that ability to connect w friends is more predictive than observations they made of apparent attachment of parents. This happens much later so of course it’s more predictive of the actual end effects - that’s when attachment styles actually show up for the first time. Kids grow up to be very adaptive toward their parents but when they get to the rest of society that’s when the failures of connection and the failed bids for attention show up. A very resilient kid will do fine with friends even with a very bad attachment environment. A very sensitive kid or one with developmental problems will struggle in social environments.
- popalchemist 11mo agoBingo. This kind of science reporting is the worst.
- parpfish 11mo agoOne study doesn’t definitively prove anything, but this is a 30 year longitudinal analysis with 700 participants. It’s way bigger than a typical study
- pfannkuchen 11mo ago> ability to connect w friends is more predictive than observations they made of apparent attachment of parents So for comparing studies all measuring this^, yes that’s true. But there could be a flaw in the methodology here, where their observations of parents and interpretation thereof may not be predictive even while the totality of parent behavior is.
- taurath 11mo agoThe study itself doesn't say anything of the sort that the article title and this thread title do. I gaurantee you that if you polled any number of therapists what people's hangups are about it would be more likely to be the parents. Everyone I know is an inheritor of some significant amount of their family's generational trauma.
- webspinner 11mo agoi probably spent more time at my friend's houses, than at my parents house when I was a kid!
- throwattached 11mo agoIn case this can be helpful to somebody else, I spent my ~twenties ignorant of what attachment styles were, while definitely exhibiting some very, very obvious attachment patterns. And I made a lot of mistakes, and made a lot of people close to me sad. Reading the "Attached" book was a huge wake-up call. According to the questionnaire, for what it's worth, I was exhibiting ~100% avoidant behavior. This led to therapy, and to a lot of atonement, and growth. I just came here to say - if you have a minute, give it a read. And for fun, try the questionnaire: https://archive.org/details/AttachementTheory/page/n37/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/AttachementTheory/page/n37/mode/... Best of luck
- boje 11mo agoI skimmed through it. Note that this book was written right before Tinder launched (2012), which might have skewed the demographic data points found in this edition (2010). Although dating apps have definitely existed before then, that (and popular internet adoption) have by far been the most influential to society at large.
- mandown2308 11mo agoFrom personal experience, I would say that's quite true.
- jweir 11mo agoAnd moms are the gate keeps of their kids friends.
- mvkel 11mo agoThere's a whole book on this called "Hold On To Your Kids." It feels a little hand-wavy, categorically dismissing all social media as evil, but the core message feels right: don't stop being a parent.
- iambateman 11mo agoThey didn’t find any effect of fathers on attachment style and I’m confused…I’ve heard countless stories about how it’s hard for people to connect as adults because of how their dad was toward them.
- accrual 11mo agoIMO in these kinds of studies you can interchange mother/father/<primary caregiver>. One can be traumatized by any caregiver regardless of gender if they're the primary adult.
- benrawk 11mo agoThe title is false, the study finds that moms have a large impact on attachment style
- exe34 11mo agoI believe this is called the post-treatment bias. If the causal arrow goes (mother-baby) -> (child-friends) -> (adult-attachment) and you include the middle one, you have already controlled for the first, and the effect disappears. Learning about the first tells you very little more once you have learnt the second.
- reliablereason 11mo agoAttachment Styles is a very low dimensional way of observing something that has very high dimensionally. When people use this type of dimensionality reduction you get problematic outcomes. This type of phenomena will always keep happening. The world is complex and perceptually high dimensional. We try to understand it(the world) using low dimensional concepts and when those low dimensional concepts have low validity issues arise.
- lkbm 11mo agoFrom the study abstract: > Early levels of mother–child relationship quality predicted individual differences in general attachment anxiety and avoidance in adulthood, as well as adults’ relationship-specific attachment orientations in each of their close relationships, including with their mothers, fathers, romantic partners, and best friends (median R² = 3% for attachment anxiety and avoidance across relationship domains).[0] Hmmm... [0] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001
- biff1 11mo agoSince the 60’s people have wanted to revise the nurture side of psychology to downplay the role of mothers, but the reality is as everyone has always known, it is the mothers. Sure, there’s also biology and trauma. But Iften the trauma is related to interaction with the parents. Also, biology is shared most of the time by the parent, so bipolar mothers tend to have bipolar children. Anyway, people have mothers before they have friends. Our first relationships become a template for subsequent ones. I feel embarrassed for the authors and the field more generally that such an obvious fact is not obvious enough to prevent absurd claims. As with most things in our society, blame the 60’s and all that came from it.
- jamesalvarez 11mo agoThe Nautil.us article misrepresents the findings of the paper, suggesting that it said anything about a causal effect. The title 'Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most' is completely inacurrate and not even hinted at by the study authors in the paper.
- popalchemist 11mo agoThe science on parental influence is well documented. This research may be onto something new - an additional layer of influence. But the personality begins to be formed by extrinsic influences within months of being born. Which is to say, it precedes the stage at which you have the ability to make friends. The relevant research is called "The Strange Situation" by Beebe. The research spanned decades with the same subjects. The universal predictor of adulthood outcomes (relationships, lifestyle, income, drug use, etc) was whether the mother was attentive and capable of attuning to the child.
- dboreham 11mo agoObviously it's the sum of all training data, so comes from the available sources. Typically that would mostly be the mother but it depends.
- popalchemist 11mo agoIncorrect assumption, we do not remain equally plastic / malleable in all domains across the entirety of our life. Attachment style crystallizes around 18 months. Trauma can re-open the issue later in life, but the personality builds in layers, with relationship to primary caretaker (usually mom) being a cornerstone.
- tehjoker 11mo agoam i reading this right that the effect size is 4%? how does this say anything?
- pessimizer 11mo agoWouldn't they, if you limited the study to the last 30 years during which mothers barely got to see their kids because of work? If you check 30 years from now it will be "Favorite Video Games and Internet Personalities, Not Childhood Friends, Shape Attachment Styles Most"