ADOLESCENT-PARENT ATTACHMENT AND ADOLESCENTS RELATIONS WITH THEIR PEERS - A CLOSER LOOK

We hypothesized that adolescents who reported secure attachments with their parents would display higher levels of interpersonal relational competence. Sixty-three 10th-grade pupils completed the Inventory of P arent Attachment and the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire. Despi te the fact that attachment is generally conceptualized as a unidimens ional construct, we found little concordance between positive aspects of attachment (i.e., trust and communication) and alienation from pare nts. Although alienation, especially from fathers, was a negative corr elate of interpersonal competence, our results indicated little corres pondence between parent-child attachment and the positive aspects of a dolescent social competence. Both positive and negative dimensions of parent-adolescent attachment were correlated with adolescent involveme nt in entracurricular peer activity. Parents seen by the adolescents a s close and trusting had negative opinions of the adolescents' best fr iends.