Attachment, parenting, and marital dissatisfaction as predictors of disruptive behavior in preschoolers

The aim of this study was to examine if an insecure coercive attachment pat tern is associated with disruptive behavior in preschoolers, as well as to examine the concurrent and joint effects of attachment pattern, marital dis satisfaction, and ineffective parenting practices on disruptive behavior. P articipants included 60 preschoolers and their mothers, recruited from thre e sites to ensure an adequate range of disruptive behavior. The Preschool A ssessment of Attachment (Crittenden, 1992) was used to measure attachment p attern. Results of an analysis of variance revealed that children in the co ercively attached dyads scored significantly higher on the measure of disru ptive behavior than either the defended or secure children. Results of a hi erarchical regression analysis indicated that the combination of a coercive pattern of attachment, marital dissatisfaction, and permissive parenting p ractices accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in disrupti ve behavior in preschoolers. These data suggest that a specific type of ins ecure attachment, a coercive pattern, is associated with disruptive behavio r in preschoolers. Also, the data are consistent with previous findings of associations among marital dissatisfaction, ineffective parenting practices , and disruptive behavior.