Four-model approach to adolescent-parent attachment relationships and adolescents' loneliness, school belonging, and teacher appraisal

This study tested monotropy, hierarchy, independence, and integration conceptual models of adolescent-mother and adolescent-father attachment to explain adolescents' perceived social interrelationships with extrafamilial attachment figures (peers, teachers). Participants included 356 Israeli adolescents (12-15 years). More adolescents were significantly classified as securely attached to mothers than to fathers, but high concordances emerged. Results supported two of the attachment models, hierarchy and integration, as explaining variation in adolescents' perceived extrafamilial interrelationships. As per the hierarchy attachment model, adolescent-mother attachment outweighed adolescent-father attachment to some extent in predicting adolescents' perceived social interrelationship measures. As per the integration attachment model, significant differences emerged on most social interrelationship measures between the 4 distinct subgroups: secure attachment to both parents, neither, only father, only mother. The Discussion section focuses on the unique importance of attachment to each parent for typically developing junior high students.