No, 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.

My 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.

Didn't really have friends as a kid, probably explains why I prefer the cold glow of a computer.

I'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.

> 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?

I 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.

On 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.

I think it just boils down to who did you experience strong emotion with and what are/were the outcomes of that relationship.

i probably spent more time at my friend's houses, than at my parents house when I was a kid!

We'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.

In 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/...

Best of luck

Direct link to study abstract: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001

PDF: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-79270-001.pdf

Here’s another report that speaks with the researchers directly

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-childhood-rel...

And the paper:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001

Potentially worrisome news for the pandemic-isolation cohort, with their outlier experience.

In 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.

Sure, and to whom does a childhood friend first attach?

duplicate post of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790575