Chapter 19
The Attachment System in Adolescence
Joseph P. Allen
Adolescence is, of course, a transitional period, and
this is particularly true with respect to the attach-
ment system. The early adolescent is beginning a
Herculean effort to become less dependent on pri-
mary attachment figures (i.e., parents). The late
adolescent has the potential to function complete-
ly independently of parents and even to become an
attachment figure to his or her own offspring. Yet
adolescence is not simply a way station between
these two kinds of involvement with attachment.
Rather, it is a period of profound transformation in
emotional, cognitive, and behavioral systems sur-
rounding attachment relationships, as the adoles-
cent evolves from being a receiver of care to becom-
ing a self-­sufficient adult and potential caregiver to
peers, romantic partners, and offspring.
The psychosocial development that takes
place in adolescence brings profound changes in
the meaning and expression of attachment pro-
cesses. As a result, one cannot begin to consider
the attachment system in adolescence without
immediately confronting fundamental questions
about its nature. Is attachment in adolescence best
conceptualized in terms of ongoing attachment re-
lationships with parents? In terms of relationships
with peers or a romantic partner? As a combina-
tion of multiple relationship experiences and be-
haviors? As a way of approaching new attachment
relationships? As a way of thinking or talking about
attachment experiences? Although some of these
419
questions also apply at earlier stages of develop-
ment, adolescence brings them all to the forefront
simultaneously.
This chapter begins with consideration of the
normative developmental changes in attachment
in adolescence. It then moves on to consider the
meaning of individual differences in attachment
phenomena. The chapter concludes with a discus-
sion of the implications of what we know about
continuities and discontinuities in attachment
phenomena, both during adolescence and between
adolescence and other phases of development.
Within this overall structure, I highlight nine pri-
mary “developmental transformations,” each of
which reflects critical changes in the attachment
system or in its conceptualization in light of the
changes occurring in adolescence.
Normative Development
of the Attachment System in Adolescence
Developmental Transformation 1: Moving from
Attachment Relationships to Generalized States
of Mind Regarding Attachment
By adolescence, a milestone is reached: The at-
tachment system can be assessed in terms of a sin-
gle overarching attachment organization that has
developed, displays stability, and predicts future
420 IV. ATTACHMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD
behavior and functioning both within and beyond
the family (Hesse, 1999). Although adolescence
is the first period during which the primary mode
of assessing this overarching organization becomes
available (via the Adult Attachment Interview
[AAI] or its downward revision, the Attachment
Interview for Childhood and Adolescence—­
Ammaniti, van IJzendoorn, Speranza, & Tambelli,
2000; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984, 1985, 1996),
the organization itself undoubtedly begins to de-
velop well before adolescence. Nevertheless, there
is reason to believe that “states of mind” regarding
attachment—the ways that individuals conceptu-
alize attachment experiences and relationships—­
develop significantly during adolescence because
of teenagers’ rapidly growing capacities for formal
operational thinking, including logical and ab-
stract reasoning abilities (Keating, 1990). These
growing capacities allow an adolescent to begin to
construct, from experiences with multiple caregiv-
ers, a more integrated and generalized stance to-
ward attachment experiences (Hesse, 1999; Main,
Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).
In addition, the cognitive and emotional
advances of adolescence allow an adolescent to
reflect upon and modify his or her states of mind
regarding attachment. For example, the dramatic
increases in cognitive differentiation of self and
other that characterize this period (Selman, 1980)
allow the teen to begin to establish a more con-
sistent view of the self as existing apart from in-
teractions with caregivers. The advent of formal
operational thinking also allows an adolescent to
contemplate abstract and counterfactual possibili-
ties, which in turn allow him or her to compare re-
lationships with different attachment figures, both
to one another and to hypothetical ideals. Thus
the adolescent gains the capacity to “de-­idealize”
parents—to see them in both positive and nega-
tive ways (Steinberg, 2005)—which research has
linked with the security of adolescents’ attachment
representations (Allen et al., 2003). Adolescents
not only demonstrate a capacity to think about at-
tachment in a general way, which extends beyond
any single relationship; they also have the capacity
to operate metacognitively on this thinking—to
begin to reconstruct (or at least tinker with) their
own states of mind regarding attachment.
Developmental Transformation 2: The Continuing
Role of Relationship Assessment
Having the AAI as a means of assessing attach-
ment phenomena in adolescence does not, how-
ever, imply that specific qualities of individual at-
tachment relationships are no longer important or
worthy of independent assessment. Although the
move to the level of representation (Main et al.,
1985) and consideration of states of mind regard-
ing attachment in adolescence have been incredi-
bly productive, they capture only certain aspects of
the attachment system’s operations in adolescence.
As much as adolescents may at times deny the im-
portance of relationships with attachment figures
(and researchers may find these relationships dif-
ficult to assess), primary attachment relationships
continue in adolescence, develop dramatically, and
provide important issues worthy of study. Regard-
less of whether a single overarching attachment
organization exists in adolescence, individual re-
lationships can bring out related, but nevertheless
potentially quite distinct, attachment “styles” dur-
ing adolescence (Furman & Simon, 2004; Furman,
Simon, Shaffer, & Bouchey, 2002). And although
we now have increasingly well-­validated measures
to assess qualities of such relationships (see, e.g.,
Bartholomew & Shaver, 1998; Brennan, Clark, &
Shaver, 1998; Crowell & Owens, 1996; Furman et
al., 2002; Roisman, Collins, Sroufe, & Egeland,
2005; Treboux, Crowell, & Waters, 2004), it will
be noted below just what a small proportion of re-
search on adolescent attachment has actually fo-
cused on identifying characteristics of individual
adolescent attachment relationships.
In sum, the construct of attachment in ado-
lescence seems best viewed not as either an in-
trapsychic or a relationship construct, but rather
as an organizational construct that is likely to be
reflected both in intrapsychic development and in
multiple aspects of ongoing attachment relation-
ships (Sroufe & Waters, 1977; Thompson, 1997).
The move to the level of representation that has
occurred by adolescence is a fundamental transfor-
mation that has inspired an explosion of produc-
tive research in adolescence and adulthood, but
the relational perspective that has so energized
attachment theory earlier in the lifespan remains
critical to consider.
Transformations in Parental Relationships
Developmental Transformation 3: Achieving
Independence from Attachment Figures
as a Developmental Goal
Kobak and Duemmler (1994) noted that one of
the most important characteristics of an adoles-
cent’s attachment relationship with a parent is its
potential to become increasingly goal-­corrected.
As the adolescent gains communication and
 19. The Attachment System in Adolescence 421
perspective-­taking skills, it becomes possible for
both parent and teen to modify (or correct) their
attachment-­related behavior when necessary, to
meet the teen’s evolving attachment needs while
balancing other needs as well. The increasingly
goal-­corrected nature of the parent–­adolescent re-
lationship provides an important context for con-
sidering one of the most important and intriguing
changes of adolescence: the decreased reliance on
parents as attachment figures.
Whereas the goal-­corrected partnership in
infancy might be described as reflecting a coordi-
nated effort between parent and child, in adoles-
cence it seems more appropriate to consider this
as a negotiated effort. To a degree unparalleled else-
where in childrearing (with the possible exception
of early toddlerhood), the adolescent struggle for
autonomy becomes an omnipresent background
against which attachment processes play out. At
this age, the many years of prior operation of the
attachment system—and the habitual patterns of
responding that have become established—­present
a significant threat to the adolescent’s efforts to es-
tablish autonomy. Put simply, it is exquisitely dif-
ficult for a teen to strike out from his or her parents
and establish independence while feeling pulled
by both habit and the attachment system to retain
their shoulders to cry on.
Yet, without such exploration, accomplish-
ing the major tasks of social development in
adolescence and young adulthood would be dif-
ficult if not impossible. In principle, this conflict
is analogous to the competing influences of the
exploratory and attachment systems on infant be-
havior, although the press for autonomy in ado-
lescence may be more relentless and more directly
in competition with the attachment system than
is the case during infancy (Allen, Moore, & Ku-
perminc, 1997; Steinberg, 1990). It seems likely
that a secure attachment relationship, with its
goal-­correcting capacities, will smooth this tran-
sition in adolescence—but it seems equally likely
that there will still be significant bumps in the
road that affect the teen’s views of attachment and
social relationships into the future (Allen, Hauser,
O’Connor, & Bell, 2002).
The issue is primarily one of developing a
new balance between attachment behaviors (and
cognitions) regarding parents and the adolescent’s
exploratory needs. The adolescent’s rapidly devel-
oping competence decreases his or her need for
dependence on parental attachment figures, and
the strong need to explore and master new envi-
ronments promotes healthy growth in the explor-
atory system. Given that the attachment system is
homeostatic, balancing safety and exploration, it
makes sense that as increasing maturity increases
safety, exploration will increase and overt attach-
ment behavior will decrease. Nevertheless, most
adolescents still turn to parents under conditions
of extreme stress (Steinberg, 1990), and parents
are still often used as attachment figures even in
young adulthood (Fraley & Davis, 1997). Ado-
lescents may be on the edge of tears far less often
than infants, but when they are highly distressed,
their likelihood of turning to parents for help still
increases dramatically. In this respect, the attach-
ment system operates much as it always has, albeit
with a different and rapidly changing balance be-
tween attachment and exploratory behaviors.
An important secondary effect of the chang-
ing balance between attachment and exploratory
behavior in adolescence is an increase in the
adolescent’s capacity to reevaluate the nature of
his or her attachment relationship with parents.
With increased independence from parents as at-
tachment figures, there comes increased freedom
from the need to monitor and assure parents’ avail-
ability to meet attachment needs (Kobak & Cole,
1994). Main and colleagues (Main & Goldwyn,
1984; Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003) refer to
this cognitive and emotional freedom as “epistem-
ic space,” and suggest that it allows individuals to
evaluate their parents as attachment figures more
objectively.
This epistemic space is likely to be as impor-
tant to the emerging capacity to think autono-
mously about attachment relationships as are the
developing cognitive capacities discussed above.
For even with fully developed cognitive capaci-
ties, it is likely to be difficult to attain the critical
distance needed to begin objectively evaluating
the qualities of an attachment relationship on
which one feels totally dependent. As indepen-
dence increases, however, so too will the emo-
tional distance needed to put developing cogni-
tive capacities to work in reevaluating the nature
of the attachment relationship with parents. Un-
comfortable as this critical distance and objective
evaluation may be to parents, it is likely to be fun-
damental to an adolescent’s capacity to develop
an accurate, thoughtful response to attachment
experiences. This in turn may be crucial to resolv-
ing attachment difficulties in relationships with
parents in ways that allow some adolescents to
form more secure relationships with others in the
future, and it may be necessary for allowing them
to reconsider and alter their own states of mind
regarding attachment (Pearson, Cohn, Cowan, &
Cowan, 1994).
422 IV. ATTACHMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD

Transformations in Peer Relationships acteristics help us to clarify the ways in which

enduring peer relationships do and do not serve
Developmental Transformation 4:
attachment functions in adolescence. These char-
Extending Attachments beyond
acteristics are (1) proximity seeking, (2) distress
the Child–­Caregiver Relationship
upon inexplicable separation, (3) pleasure or joy
upon reunion, (4) grief at loss, and (5) secure-
The adolescent is not simply becoming more in-
base behavior (comfort and freer exploration in
dependent of parents, however. In important
the presence of an attachment figure). Kobak,
respects, he or she is beginning the process of
Rosenthal, and Serwik (2005) note an additional
transferring dependencies from parental to peer re-
requirement implicit in the characteristics Ains-
lationships. Within the constellation of an infant’s
worth described: The person must view the attach-
attachment figures, a hierarchy is believed to exist,
ment figure as having an enduring commitment to
with the most preferred attachment figure serving
being available if needed, regardless of changes in
as the “principal” attachment figure and others as
time or context.
secondary figures (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Cassidy,
Ainsworth’s list of features makes clear the
1999). If we begin with the premise that most
ways in which childhood playmates differ from
adults are able to form attachment relationships
attachment figures. It also makes clear the extent
with a peer, whereas almost no children can do so,
to which these distinctions begin to blur when
then we must recognize that adolescence will be a
adolescent peer relationships are considered. By
period during which peer relationships will gradu-
late adolescence, long-term relationships can be
ally take on more and more of the qualities of full-
formed in which peers (as romantic partners or
blown adult attachment relationships. What is not
close friends) potentially serve as attachment figures
yet known is how this ontogenetically driven press
in all senses of the term. The change that is occur-
to shift attachment allegiance to a peer or roman-
ring is not just a gradual transition from one class
tic partner unfolds in adolescence.
of attachment figures (parents) to another (peers).
By midadolescence, interactions with peers
Rather, the very nature of what it means to define
have begun to take on many of the functions
a relationship as an attachment relationship must
they will serve for the remainder of the lifespan—­
also change as both parties now take on adult or
providing important sources of intimacy, feedback
adult-like capacities. Unlike in infancy and even
about social behavior, social influence and infor-
childhood, what spurs an adolescent to approach
mation, and ultimately attachment and sexual re-
an attachment figure will only rarely be fundamen-
lationships and lifelong partnerships (Ainsworth,
tal physical safety needs, extreme distress, or risk of
1989; Collins & Laursen, 2000; Gavin & Furman,
imminent emotional disorganization. Rather, the
1989, 1996; Hartup, 1992). The development of
spurs are now usually other, more subtle needs that
peer relationships in adolescence is characterized
may depend on complex interpretive contexts, and
by the gradual emergence of the capacity for adult-
may be more flexibly attended to or ignored in a
like intimacy and supportiveness (Buhrmester,
given situation. In addition, a relationship among
1996; Collins, van Dulmen, Crouter, & Booth,
equals (both of whom may be quite interested in
2006; Hartup, 1992). These well-known changes
preserving their independence) may be a context
create an important challenge for our efforts to un-
that fundamentally alters the meaning and expres-
derstand the operation of the attachment system
sion of attachment behaviors that were previously
during this period. The critical question is this:
directed toward a caregiver.
When do peer relationships become attachment
We now know that there is a broad array of
relationships? This question can be more fruitfully,
different neural, physiological, and psychologi-
though less conventionally, phrased as follows:
cal systems underlying attachment behavior (see
How do peer relationships gradually take on at-
Coan, Chapter 11, this volume). These range
tachment functions?
from managing physiological arousal to establish-
ing a sense of emotional security, to deactivating
Developmental Transformation 5: Moving from
primitive centers of the brain that support “flight”
Attachment Relationships to Attachment Processes
under conditions of stress (Coan, Schaefer, & Da-
in Relationships
vidson, 2006; Cummings & Davies, 1996; Hofer,
1994, 2006; Taylor et al., 2000). Given the infant’s
Ainsworth (1989) delineated five characteristics
extreme vulnerability, limited capacities for self-
that distinguish attachment relationships from
help, and intense relationships with caregivers,
other enduring social relationships. These char-
these functions all come together simultaneously
 19. The Attachment System in Adolescence 423
and powerfully under conditions of stress as a fully
functioning attachment system. In adolescence, in
contrast, it is not clear whether the more primitive
neural circuits in the brain responsible for detect-
ing and physically responding to threat (e.g., the
amygdala and the caudate/nucleus accumbens) are
fully activated by the psychosocial stressors that
adolescents typically experience.
Main (1999) has posited that the attachment
system evolved partly because of the value of asso-
ciating with others as a source of safety, given our
vulnerability as a ground-­living species. Clearly,
this specific function applies only rarely to modern
adolescents, even if many other attachment pro-
cesses still remain active. With these differences
comes the likelihood that the multiple functions
and features of the attachment system—which
often operate powerfully and in unison during
infancy—may begin to operate less synchronously
in adolescence, particularly in interactions with
peers. In addition, with the adolescent’s increased
cognitive capacity comes increased flexibility in
directing attachment behavior. Adolescents in-
creasingly gain the capacity to be “opportunis-
tic” in seeking out a potential attachment figure,
whether it be a fellow camper at a 4-week summer
camp or a close-in-age sibling that a teen turns to
as parents go through a divorce. Such relationships
occur with enough frequency to anchor many pop-
ular books and films depicting adolescents (see,
e.g., Hinton, 1967; King, 1986).
Given these changes from infancy to adoles-
cence, trying to decide whether a given adolescent
relationship is or is not an “attachment relation-
ship” may be overly simplistic. Rather than wading
into the semantic quagmire of delineating the pre-
cise conditions under which a given relationship
beyond infancy becomes an “attachment relation-
ship,” it may make more sense to recognize that
adolescent relationships increasingly take on criti-
cal attachment functions, even if such functions
are neither as synchronous nor as intense as they
were in earlier relationships with parents.
A focus on peer attachment processes (as op-
posed to the presence or absence of peer attach-
ment relationships) allows us to formulate fruitful
research questions. How does the process of “try-
ing out” close relationships to see whether they
might serve attachment functions work? Does this
process differ for individuals with different attach-
ment histories? Which facets of attachment be-
havior come “online” earliest in adolescent peer
relationships? What happens when adolescents
make precocious (or delayed) transitions to using
peers to serve attachment needs? Addressing these
questions can begin to build an understanding of
the development of the attachment system during
adolescence, in a way that a static dichotomizing
of relationships as “attachment relationships” or
not does not allow.
One of the most important endpoints of de-
veloping peer relationships in adolescence is the
attainment of romantic relationships that may
eventually become lifelong attachment relation-
ships (Ainsworth, 1989; Collins, van Dulmen, et
al., 2006; Furman et al., 2002). Romantic relation-
ships do not result solely from developing interests
in forming attachments with peers, of course. They
also reflect the operation of a sexual/reproductive
system that is every bit as biologically rooted and
critical to species survival as the attachment sys-
tem (Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999; Hazan &
Shaver, 1987; Shaver, Hazan, & Bradshaw, 1988).
However, the sexual and attachment systems
both push toward the establishment of romantic
relationships characterized by sufficient intensity,
shared interests, and strong affect to begin to take
over some of the functions of prior parent–child
relationships. The sexual component of these re-
lationships may also help advance the attachment
component by providing consistent motivation
for interaction, experience with intense, intimate
affect, and a history of shared unique experience.
By midadolescence, we may begin to see romantic
relationships that at times meet all of the crite-
ria Ainsworth proposed for attachment relation-
ships—from proximity seeking to strong separa-
tion protest. And romantic partners may take
turns being “stronger and wiser” for each other and
thereby serving as attachment figures (Ainsworth,
1982). Whether adolescent romantic relation-
ships do these things enough to be called “attach-
ment relationships” may or may not be merely a
matter of semantics, but that the development of
attachment processes within these relationships is
worthy of study is beyond question.
Individual Differences
in Adolescent Attachment Strategies
Having established some notion of the transfor-
mations in attachment-­related cognitions, feel-
ings, and behavior that occur during adolescence,
it is now possible to consider what we know about
individual differences in the functioning of the
attachment system in that age period. Somewhat
ironically, given the intense relationship focus
propounded by Ainsworth and Bowlby (Ains-
worth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby,
424 IV. ATTACHMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD
1969/1982), by far the bulk of research on indi-
vidual differences in adolescent attachment in the
Ainsworth–­Bowlby tradition uses the AAI to as-
sess adolescent internal states of mind regarding
attachment. Far less research has addressed indi-
vidual differences in adolescents’ actual attach-
ment relationships, a point that will be considered
further below. Both intrapsychic and relational ap-
proaches to adolescent attachment are considered
below, however, and the preponderance of atten-
tion given to the intrapsychic approaches should
not be taken as an endorsement of the primacy of
those approaches, but only as a reflection of their
place in the research literature to date. Unless oth-
erwise noted, all references to security or insecuri-
ty as a property of the individual teen are based on
assessments with the AAI; references to research
on properties of specific relationships will note the
measures used for each study considered.
Individual Differences in Family Relationships
The potential tension noted above between the
adolescent’s developmental push to gain autonomy
and the operation of the attachment system gives
rise to important individual differences in how this
tension is managed. Just as the balance of explora-
tion from a secure base has been highly informa-
tive with respect to individual differences in infant
attachments, so too the balance of autonomy and
attachment processes in adolescence appears as
a robust marker of the quality of an adolescent’s
internal state of mind regarding attachment. A
secure goal-­corrected partnership potentially allows
both parent and teen to recognize the teen’s au-
tonomy strivings and to support these while main-
taining the relationship. For such a partnership
to be successful, however, two key ingredients are
required: a strong capacity to communicate across
the increasingly divergent perspectives and needs
of the parent and teen, and a willingness among
both parties to allow the adolescent to seek au-
tonomy while maintaining the parent–teen rela-
tionship.
Developmental Transformation 6:
Open, Full Dyadic Communication by Adolescents
with Secure Attachment States of Mind
Cassidy (2001) has suggested that a secure attach-
ment organization beyond childhood may be re-
flected in part by efforts to communicate truthfully
and fully in intimate relationships about impor-
tant topics. Several lines of research on adolescent
security bear this out.
One predictor of a secure adolescent state
of mind is the presence of a parent who is highly
sensitive to the adolescent’s internal states. When
sensitivity is assessed in terms of a mother’s accu-
racy in predicting her teen’s responses on a self-
­perception inventory, it is robustly linked to ado-
lescent security in the AAI (Allen et al., 2003). In
fact, the correlation of security with this marker of
sensitivity was slightly higher (r = .35) than is typi-
cally found in studies of parental sensitivity toward
infants (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997). One
possible explanation is that adolescence research-
ers have an advantage over their infancy counter-
parts: In adolescence, sensitivity can be assessed
directly in the form of concordance between pa-
rental report and adolescent behavior. The infancy
researcher, in contrast, has the burden of trying to
judge an infant’s needs with sufficient accuracy to
allow the presumption that any parental deviation
from the researcher’s judgments reflects parental
insensitivity. Efforts to assess maternal sensitiv-
ity in adolescence by using the more demanding
third-party approach used in infancy have been
less successful (Beckwith, Cohen, & Hamilton,
1999). Infant research on sensitivity does not ap-
pear to have taken the approach of asking parents
to predict their infant’s behavior, although such an
approach appears promising.
Although it is quite plausible that parental
sensitivity leads to adolescent security, another
explanation for the link between attachment and
parental sensitivity during adolescence is that se-
cure adolescents allow parents to be more sensi-
tive by communicating their emotional states to
the parents more accurately. Becker-Stoll, Delius,
and Scheitenberger (2001) used fine-­grained emo-
tion coding during discussion tasks to observe, at
a micro level, the degree to which teens are af-
fectively communicative with their mothers. They
found a reliable association between adolescents’
security and the degree to which they were affec-
tively communicative.
Further supporting this idea, we (Berger, Jodl,
Allen, McElhaney, & Kuperminc, 2005) reported
that adolescent insecure states of mind were linked
to greater overall discrepancies between adoles-
cents’ and parents’ reports of the adolescents’ psy-
chological symptoms. Notably, these discrepancies
appeared not only when teen reports of symptoms
were compared to parental reports, but also when
teen reports of their own symptoms were com-
pared to the reports of their closest peers regarding
the teens’ symptoms. This suggests that security is
linked to properties of adolescents’ dyadic commu-
nication both with parents and with close peers.
 19. The Attachment System in Adolescence 425
With respect to the dismissing attachment
organization, we (Berger et al., 2005) found that
communication was just generally poor and that
discrepancies were not directional in nature (i.e.,
there was not a consistent pattern of over- or
underreporting symptoms by any party). With
respect to the preoccupied attachment organiza-
tion, a specific form of bias in communication
was found: Adolescents with preoccupied states
of mind regarding attachment in the AAI con-
sistently reported the presence of symptoms at
levels that were significantly higher than those
recognized by either parents or peers. These find-
ings make sense if we view preoccupation as a
manifestation of hyperactivation of the attach-
ment system, and if we recognize that symptom
reports can readily be seen as cries of distress (e.g.,
as attachment behaviors). From this perspective,
we see that insecure-­preoccupied adolescents are
reporting their distress to a high degree, but not
having these reports heard (or fully believed) by
the people closest to them.
Clearly, both an adolescent’s attachment or-
ganization and the quality of his or her relation-
ship with parents and peers exist as parallel on-
going transactional processes, making any effort
to tease out directional causal influences excep-
tionally difficult. What can be said, however, is
that adolescents’ difficulties communicating their
internal states accurately to others appears as a
robust marker of adolescent insecurity—­whether
these difficulties stem from adolescent communi-
cative difficulties, problems in selecting receptive
peer partners, parental lack of sensitivity, or some
combination of all these factors.
Developmental Transformation 7:
Resolution of the Attachment–­Autonomy Tension
in Adolescents with Secure Attachment States
of Mind
As noted above, the negotiation of attach-
ment and autonomy issues may be problematic for
all families at some point, but it may be especially
difficult for the family of an insecure adolescent.
The moodiness, changing relationships, tension,
and growing emotional and behavioral indepen-
dence from parents that characterize adolescent
development may conspire to create chronic ac-
tivation of the attachment system, thus increasing
the impact of an insecure attachment organization
on the adolescent’s behavior. Insecure adolescents
(and parents) may be overwhelmed by the af-
fect brought on by disagreements (Kobak, Cole,
Ferenz-­Gillies, Fleming, & Gamble, 1993) and
may perceive disagreements as threats to other-
wise shaky relationships. In addition, an insecure
adolescent may have a history of less than positive
experiences with attachment figures when they
were called upon in times of need, which is likely
to color future interactions with them.
One of the more consistent findings in the
adolescent attachment literature is that teens with
secure attachment states of mind tend to handle
conflicts with parents by engaging in productive,
problem-­solving discussions that balance auton-
omy strivings with efforts to preserve relation-
ships with parents (Allen & Hauser, 1996; Allen,
McElhaney, Kuperminc, & Jodl, 2004; Allen et
al., 2003; Allen, Porter, McFarland, McElhaney,
& Marsh, 2007; Becker-Stoll & Fremmer-­Bombik,
1997; Kobak et al., 1993). These discussions may
be heated or intense at times, but in families with
secure adolescents they are tempered by behaviors
that maintain and support the parent–teen relation-
ship. In particular, the relationship-­maintaining
behaviors in the midst of conflict are most consis-
tently linked to adolescent security, and typically
the behavior of the adolescents (rather than their
parents) is most predictive of adolescent security.
In some sense, these relationship-­supporting be-
haviors may be viewed as “secure-base” behaviors,
in which an adolescent is revisiting and refreshing
the attachment bond even in the midst of explor-
ing autonomy from parents.
Most of the research in this area has been
done with mothers, although recent work sug-
gests that similar patterns exist for fathers as well
(Allen et al., 2007). Research on fathers adds one
other behavior to the mix—use of harsh conflict
tactics—as a marker of adolescent insecurity. As
with research on mothers, the focus is less on
whether an adolescent can establish autonomy
in the disagreement than on the autonomy chal-
lenge as a backdrop against which relationships
are either actively maintained or significantly
threatened.
In terms of specific types of insecure states of
mind, Becker-Stoll and Fremmer-­Bombik (1997)
report that dismissing adolescents show the least
autonomy and relatedness in interactions with par-
ents of all attachment groups observed. This sug-
gests that a dismissing individual’s characteristic
withdrawal from engagement with attachment ex-
periences may particularly hinder the task of rene-
gotiating parent–­adolescent relationships. Reimer,
Overton, Steidl, Rosenstein, and Horowitz (1996)
also noted that families of dismissing adolescents
tend to be less responsive to their adolescents than
do families of preoccupied adolescents.
426 IV. ATTACHMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD
Insecure preoccupation, in contrast, appears
to be best predicted from heightened and unpro-
ductive overengagement with parents in argu-
ments that ultimately undermine an adolescent’s
autonomy. We (Allen & Hauser, 1996) reported
that one indicator of preoccupation with attach-
ment in young adulthood—use of passive thought
processes, reflecting mental entanglement between
self and caregivers—was predicted by adolescents’
overpersonalized behaviors toward fathers in ar-
guments 10 years earlier and by adolescents’ lack
of simple withdrawal from or avoidance of argu-
ments. This overengagement appears to extend
well into late adolescence, as research also suggests
that adolescents with insecure-­preoccupied status
on the AAI are likely to have more difficulty leav-
ing home successfully for college, displaying high-
er levels of both conflict and contact with parents
during the transition (Bernier, Larose, & Whipple,
2005). These effects were not found for adoles-
cents who were not leaving for college, suggesting
that these attachment dynamics were likely to be
activated mainly in the presence of a significant
stress to the attachment system.
Family interaction patterns may also predict
changes in adolescents’ states of mind over time.
When autonomy-­undermining, enmeshed behav-
ior between mothers and their adolescents was ob-
served at age 16, this predicted relative decreases in
levels of security from age 16 to age 18 (Allen et
al., 2004)—a notable finding, given evidence that
insecure-­preoccupied mothers may be more likely
to engage in such entangled conversations (Kobak,
Ferenz-­Gillies, Everhart, & Seabrook, 1994). As
in other attachment and family interaction studies
of enmeshed and overpersonalizing behavior, the
key element was the adolescents’ behavior, not the
mothers’. Adolescents who engage in such behavior-
al strategies may be struggling with autonomy issues
in a highly confused way that leaves them mentally
and emotionally entangled in their relationships
with their mothers. Such mental entanglement
during a developmental period characterized by the
need to establish autonomy seems likely to produce
enormous emotional stress—­stress that might typi-
cally lead to seeking out an attachment figure. The
catch in this case is that the stress obviously cannot
be easily assuaged by mothers, given the role of the
maternal relationship as the source of the stress. This
unassuaged stress seems likely to make it difficult for
the adolescents to step back sufficiently to engage
in the thoughtful and balanced reevaluation of pa-
rental relationships that is characteristic of secure-
­autonomous individuals (Main, 1999).
One long-term longitudinal study has shown
that infant security with mothers was more predic-
tive of observed qualities of autonomy and related-
ness in adolescent–­mother interactions than it was
of adolescent states of mind regarding attachment
(Becker-Stoll & Fremmer-­Bombik, 1997). These
findings suggest that success in negotiating auton-
omy issues in adolescence may be a stage-­specific
manifestation of a long-term secure attachment
relationship with parents. Notably, continuity in
the qualities of an attachment relationship were ob-
tained, even in the absence of continuity from an
early attachment relationship to an adolescent’s
later internalized state of mind regarding attach-
ment. This at least raises the possibility that se-
curity in adolescent–­parent relationships may be
distinct in important ways from security in ado-
lescents’ states of mind, and that both are worthy
of study.
Individual Differences in Peer Relationships
Developmental Transformation 8: Peer Relationships
as the Critical Context in Which Individual
Differences in Attachment Processes Emerge
There are several reasons to expect close links be-
tween an adolescent’s attachment organization and
qualities of ongoing peer relationships. A secure
state of mind regarding attachment, characterized
by coherence in talking (and presumably thinking)
about attachment-­related experiences and feelings,
should permit similar experiences and feelings in
peer relationships to be processed more accurately
and coherently as well. In contrast, the defensive
exclusion of information that is characteristic of
insecure organizations may lead to distorted com-
munications and negative expectations about oth-
ers, both of which have been linked to problems in
social functioning at various points in the lifespan
(Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, & Parke, 1996; Dodge,
1993; Slough & Greenberg, 1990). Similarly, dis-
comfort with attachment-­related affect and ex-
periences may lead adolescents with dismissing
attachment strategies to push away peers, particu-
larly those who could become close friends (La-
rose & Bernier, 2001; Spangler & Zimmermann,
1999). This is consistent with the finding that for
college students, hostility and lack of social skills
as rated by close friends are linked to students’ in-
secure attachment organizations (Kobak & Sceery,
1988). A related mechanism by which attachment
organization may be linked to peer relationships
is that insecure attachment organization co-­occurs
 19. The Attachment System in Adolescence 427
with (and serves to mark) problematic ongoing re-
lationships with parents, which make it difficult to
move freely beyond these relationships to establish
successful new relationships with peers (Gavin &
Furman, 1996).
A large, rapidly growing body of research sug-
gests a fairly tight linkage between a secure ado-
lescent attachment organization and competence
with peers. Research indicates, for example, that
secure adolescents are more comfortable with the
intimate emotional interactions common in close
friendships (Allen et al., 2007; Lieberman, Doyle,
& Markiewicz, 1999; Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson,
& Collins, 2005b; Weimer, Kerns, & Oldenberg,
2004; Zimmermann, 2004). Observational data
suggest that this competence is a result of gener-
alized comfort in handling one’s own emotional
reactions in challenging situations (Zimmermann,
Maier, Winter, & Grossmann, 2001). Similarly,
using Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) three-­category
prototype measure of attachment style, Cooper,
Shaver, and Collins (1998) found that anxious-
­ambivalent adolescents were prone to interperson-
al hostility. And although some research suggests
that security is more relevant to functioning in
close relationships than in broader peer relation-
ships (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Lieberman et al.,
1999), adolescent security has also been linked to
such measures of broader social competence such
as overall friendship quality, popularity, and social
acceptance (Allen, Moore, Kuperminc, & Bell,
1998; Allen et al., 2007).
In some cases, peer relationship qualities
(particularly the ability to seek emotional support
from a peer while maintaining autonomy with re-
spect to peer pressure) are more strongly linked
with adolescent attachment states of mind than
are some of the best markers of maternal and pater-
nal relationship qualities (Allen et al., 2007). This
is not necessarily surprising, given that mastering
the realm of peer relationships may be the single
greatest social-­developmental challenge faced by
most adolescents, and it does not mean that these
peer relationships are causally influencing adoles-
cent security. It does suggest, however, the extent
to which peer relationships have become the cen-
tral arena in which attachment processes are likely
to play out during adolescence and beyond.
Individual differences in attachment organi-
zation are also linked to behavior in romantic and
sexual relationships in adolescence. Furman and
colleagues (2002) found that adolescents’ work-
ing models of relationships with romantic partners
exhibit substantial similarities to working models
of relationships with parents (and with friends).
Furman (2001) also noted that many of the same
features of cognitive appraisal and representation
that apply to thinking about relationships with
parents and peers are likely to extend to romantic
relationships as well. It thus seems likely that prior
attachment experiences and current patterns of
approach to attachment thoughts and feelings will
in turn shape the nature of developing romantic
relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1994).
In late adolescence, security as assessed with
the AAI has been linked to the subsequent quality
of interactions with a romantic partner, as coded
from videotaped observations (Roisman, Madsen,
Hennighausen, Sroufe, & Collins, 2001). Assess-
ments of the degree of self-­reported insecurity in
romantic relationships has been linked to greater
anxiety among relationship partners, as well as to
greater incidence of sexual intercourse but with
less enjoyment derived from it (Tracy, Shaver,
Albino, & Cooper, 2003). Moore (1997) reported
that among sexually active adolescents, insecurity
was associated with having more sexual partners
and with less frequent use of contraception. We
(Marsh, McFarland, Allen, McElhaney, & Land,
2003) found that an interaction of adolescent pre-
occupation and mothers’ focus on their own (as
opposed to their adolescents’) autonomy was a
predictor of adolescents’ early sexual activity. Pre-
occupied adolescents whose mothers were focused
on their own (maternal) autonomy were more
likely to engage in early sexual activity, whereas
preoccupied adolescents whose mothers were rela-
tively unfocused on their own autonomy had strik-
ingly lower rates of early sexual activity (Marsh et
al., 2003). Of course, in thinking about qualities of
dating relationships, partners’ attachment organi-
zation will also be important to consider, as even
later in adulthood only modest evidence of assor-
tative mating with respect to attachment exists
(Owens et al., 1995; Treboux et al., 2004). In this
sense, predictions from the AAI-based security of
one party in a relationship to overall qualities of
that relationship are likely to underestimate the
role of attachment, given that attachment is being
assessed for only one of the two partners who to-
gether determine the qualities of the relationship
(see J. Feeney, Chapter 21, this volume).
Attachment and Adolescent Mental Health
A number of recent studies suggest substantial
links between adolescent attachment organiza-
tion and mental health. Among the most highly
428 IV. ATTACHMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD
disturbed adolescents—those requiring residential
treatment—three studies have found links to either
concurrent or future attachment insecurity, and
to heightened prevalence of insecure-­unresolved
attachment status (Allen, Hauser, & Borman-
­Spurrell, 1996; Wallis & Steele, 2001). Even with
less severe forms of disturbance, both the preoc-
cupied and dismissing strategies have been im-
plicated in problems of psychosocial functioning,
although the two are associated with somewhat
different patterns of problems.
Adolescents’ use of preoccupied strategies
has been most closely linked to internalizing
problems, particularly to adolescents’ self-­reports
of depression, anxiety disorders, and internaliz-
ing symptoms and stress during transitions (Allen
et al., 1996; Bernier et al., 2005; Cole-Detke &
Kobak, 1996; Kobak, Sudler, & Gamble, 1991;
Larose & Bernier, 2001; Rosenstein & Horowitz,
1996). In addition, preoccupied attachment states
of mind may interact with a wide array of psycho-
social and environmental factors to predict critical
outcomes. When preoccupied teens are confront-
ed with intrapsychic states or environments that
are confusing or enmeshing, higher levels of inter-
nalizing symptoms are found. For example, Adam,
Sheldon-­Keller, and West (1996) reported that
suicidality in adolescence was related to a combi-
nation of preoccupied and unresolved attachment
status. Similarly, preoccupied adolescents who
had mothers who could not exercise their own
autonomy in discussions (i.e., were passive and
enmeshed) displayed higher levels of depression
(Marsh et al., 2003).
Conversely, preoccupied teens are more
likely to display externalizing behaviors under
some circumstances. For example, when they have
mothers who display extremely high levels of their
own (maternal) autonomy in discussions (perhaps
asserting themselves to the point of ignoring their
adolescents), preoccupied teens have higher levels
of drug use, engage in precocious sexual activity,
and exhibit higher levels of delinquent behavior
over the following year (Allen et al., 1998). Simi-
larly, when preoccupied adolescents are exposed
to poverty (perhaps another situation in which
many of their needs are ignored) and/or are male,
there is also an increased likelihood of delinquent
behavior. Although the pattern is not yet well es-
tablished, the initial research findings collectively
suggest that when preoccupied adolescents are ex-
posed to passivity or enmeshment, an internaliz-
ing, anxious/depressed pattern emerges; however,
in situations where their attachment entreaties are
likely to be ignored or rebuffed, they are likely to
react with externalizing behavior.
There is, of course, a third environmental
possibility for preoccupied teens. They may be ex-
posed to positive social relationships and behav-
iors, and in this case the outcomes look far more
positive. When preoccupied and secure teens are
exposed to positive friendships, they are at lower
risk for delinquent behavior (McElhaney, Immele,
Smith, & Allen, 2006). In addition, when exposed
to effective maternal behavioral control strategies,
both preoccupied and secure teens have lower lev-
els of delinquent behavior than do dismissing teens
exposed to the same maternal behavior (Allen et
al., 1998).
Taken together, these results suggest that the
hyperactivated state of the attachment system in
preoccupied adolescents leads them to be exqui-
sitely sensitive to their social environments. In
enmeshed environments, internalizing symptoms
may be a way of seeking responses from attach-
ment figures (similar to an infant’s cries of dis-
tress). When these relatively unobtrusive internal-
izing behaviors are likely to be completely ignored
(in less responsive environments), an adolescent
may “raise the volume” by turning to more dra-
matic externalizing behaviors as a way to engage
parental attention and to express anger and resis-
tance. Finally, a hyperactivated attachment sys-
tem, although clearly problematic, is nonetheless
a system that continues to function; in cases where
it brings the adolescent into contact with positive
social interactions, it appears to leave the teen re-
sponsive to these as well.
In contrast to preoccupied adolescents, Cole-
Detke and Kobak (1996; Kobak & Cole, 1994)
suggest that adolescents with dismissing strategies
may take on symptoms that distract themselves
and others from attachment-­related cues. When
examining psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents,
almost all of whom were insecure, Rosenstein and
Horowitz (1996) reported that dismissing strate-
gies were associated with externalizing symptoms:
Dismissing adolescents were more likely to exhibit
substance abuse and conduct disorder. Similarly,
my colleagues and I found that dismissing attach-
ment strategies were predictive of increasing de-
linquency and externalizing behavior over both
shorter and longer spans of adolescence (Allen,
Marsh, et al., 2002; Allen et al., 2007).
In addition, dismissing attachment strategies
have been linked to difficulty getting assistance
from peers and teachers, as well as to peer-­reported
social withdrawal during the transition to college
 19. The Attachment System in Adolescence 429
(Larose & Bernier, 2001). Consistent with this
finding, insecurity that manifests itself primarily
as dismissal of attachment in early adolescence
has been linked to relative decreases in social skills
over time (Allen, Marsh, et al., 2002) and with
less active coping strategies (Seiffge-­Krenke &
Beyers, 2005). Cole-Detke and Kobak (1996) also
reported that eating-­disordered individuals in a
college population were more likely to use dismiss-
ing strategies; the attention given to their eating
behaviors was hypothesized to distract them from
feelings of internal emotional distress. Unlike pre-
occupied adolescents, dismissing adolescents do
not appear to be particularly sensitive to parental
behaviors: For example, a factor such as paren-
tal control of adolescent behavior, which is well
established as a buffer against delinquency, did
not appear to serve this role for dismissing teens
(Allen et al., 1998).
Other than the few studies mentioned at the
outset of this section, disorganized or unresolved
states of mind have been the subject of far less
research on adolescent psychopathology. This at-
tachment status has been linked to disrupted ma-
ternal behavior with infants in adolescent–­mother
dyads (Madigan, Moran, & Pederson, 2006), but
otherwise it remains a fertile, relatively untapped
area for studying more severe forms of adolescent
psychopathology.
Continuity, Discontinuity,
and the Central Question:
What Is Attachment in Adolescence?
Thus far, this chapter has considered many of
the features of adolescent attachment strategies
while skirting the question raised at the outset:
Just what is attachment in adolescence? When
we are considering continuities of attachment in
adolescence to attachment at other developmen-
tal stages, however, precision in defining attach-
ment becomes critical. For example, considering
the transition from the assessment of attachment
relationships in infancy and childhood (albeit rela-
tionships that are also represented internally), to
the assessment of an internal state in adolescence
and beyond that transcends any particular rela-
tionship, makes clear that the two most common
measurement approaches assess fundamentally
different constructs at these two time points. At-
tachment as assessed with the AAI is not simply
a more developed version of what we see in the
Strange Situation. Rather, these two constructs
exist at completely different levels of analysis—
the intrapsychic and the dyadic/relational—and
thus by their very nature differ in fundamental and
irreducible ways. The question that adolescent re-
search brings into focus most strongly is this: How
do these two different constructs relate to one an-
other, both conceptually and empirically?
From infancy to adolescence (and from the
Strange Situation to the AAI), what we find is
that the continuities across measures of attach-
ment processes are quite modest. These conti-
nuities appear most robustly when environments
are generally stable and benign, and they may
disappear entirely under more challenging cir-
cumstances (although assessment of intervening
environmental factors can account for some ap-
parent discontinuities) (Hamilton, 2000; Waters,
Hamilton, & Weinfield, 2000; Weinfield, Sroufe,
& Egeland, 2000; Weinfield, Whaley, & Egeland,
2004). Notably, observed continuities between in-
fant attachment status and other qualities of ado-
lescents’ close relationships make clear that infant
attachment status undoubtedly has implications
for future relationship qualities, which in some
cases are even stronger than links to future adoles-
cent and adult attachment measures (Grossmann,
Grossmann, & Kindler, 2005; Sroufe, Egeland,
Carlson, & Collins, 2005b; Zimmermann, 2004;
Zimmermann, Maier, Winter, & Grossmann,
2001). Within adolescence, security assessed with
the AAI displays only very modest correlations
with maternal security (Allen et al., 2004). These
continuities and discontinuities are considered far
more thoroughly in other chapters of this volume.
For the purposes of this chapter, the point is that
the continuities from infancy and from concurrent
measures of parental attachment status to adoles-
cent states of mind regarding attachment are rela-
tively modest.
Evidence from within adolescence, however,
suggests that the modest continuity with prior in-
fant attachment and current maternal attachment
is not due to any inherent instability in adolescent
attachment organization; nor is it probably due
to difficulties in assessing adolescent attachment
with the AAI. Attachment as assessed with the
AAI displays strong stability, with test–­retest cor-
relations between overall indices of security rang-
ing from .51 to .61 from ages 16 to 18 in two dif-
ferent samples in Europe and the United States
(Allen et al., 2004; Zimmermann & Becker-Stoll,
2002). Similarly, even in research using a modified
AAI (the Attachment Interview of Childhood
and Adolescence) with a far younger sample, simi-
430 IV. ATTACHMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD
lar stabilities have been found in overall security
between ages 10 and 14 (kappa = .48) (Ammaniti
et al., 2000).
Even the discontinuities in attachment states
of mind across adolescence that have been found
appear to be explained largely by environmental
factors. Exposure to social and intrapsychic envi-
ronments that emotionally overwhelm adolescents,
while leaving them relatively unable to obtain
support from attachment figures, predicts relative
increases in insecurity over and above baseline lev-
els across a 2-year period in adolescence (Allen et
al., 2004). These environments include poverty
(which stresses adolescents while draining par-
ents), adolescent depression (a difficult-to-­soothe
form of distress), and emotional enmeshment
(which stresses adolescents while making them
want to avoid seeking comfort from a parental fig-
ure). Together, these factors account for substantial
variance in the change in security during adoles-
cence. They bring the R2 for security at age 18 (as
predicted by security and environmental factors at
age 16) up to .72, which approaches the limits of
the AAI’s reliability. Together with the underlying
stability of security, these findings suggest both the
robustness of attachment during adolescence and
its continuing sensitivity to qualities of the adoles-
cent’s psychosocial environment.
If the lack of strong continuity between in-
fant Strange Situation status and adolescent at-
tachment is not due to problems in measurement
in adolescence, or to any lack of meaningfulness of
the construct of adolescent attachment organiza-
tion, then two explanations remain most viable.
First, intervening experiences between infancy
and adolescence may play a large part in altering
the developmental course of the attachment sys-
tem for many individuals. Recent research raises
questions about whether in fact any internal stabil-
ity in attachment actually exists from infancy to
adolescence; rather, the observed continuity over
this time span may primarily reflect stability in
parents’ attachment strategies (Belsky & Fearon,
2002; van IJzendoorn, 1996). This view is sup-
ported by evidence just reviewed showing that the
attachment system remains quite open to environ-
mental inputs well into adolescence.
Developmental Transformation 9:
The Emergence of the Caregiving System
A second explanation for the relative lack of con-
tinuity in attachment measures from infancy to
adolescence is that the construct we are measuring
with the AAI is actually a fundamentally different
(albeit related) construct from what we measure in
the infant Strange Situation. Mary Main has been
quite careful to describe what the AAI measures
not as attachment per se, but as “states of mind
with respect to attachment.” And she has de-
scribed the analogue to infant security not as ado-
lescent or adult security, but as a state of mind that
is “autonomous, yet valuing” of attachment (Main
& Goldwyn, 1984; Main et al., 2003). Although
thus far I have relied on the convenience of dis-
cussing AAI study results in terms of “security” of
“adolescent attachment,” this usage, while handy
and defensible, may obscure several important dis-
tinctions.
If one simply examines the origin of the AAI
and the validation research that led to its rapid
rise to prominence, it is difficult to avoid the con-
clusion that the AAI is most directly tapping not
the attachment system of the individual, but the
caregiving system (Allen & Manning, in press).
Far more than any other measure, the AAI most
strongly predicts success as a caregiver in raising a
secure infant—as indeed it was primarily designed
and intended to do. Obviously the caregiving and
attachment systems are likely to be highly inter-
related, as both draw upon many of the same cog-
nitive, behavioral, and emotional subsystems. It
even appears defensible to use the terms “attach-
ment” and “security” broadly to refer to qualities of
both kinds of systems. However, equally obviously,
these systems are not isomorphic. Although one’s
expectations about getting one’s own attachment
needs met may be linked to one’s ability to meet
the attachment needs of others, the two are clearly
not identical (Collins, Ford, Guichard, & Allard,
2006). (See George and Solomon, Chapter 35,
this volume, for an extensive discussion of the
caregiving system.)
This issue comes to a head in adolescence,
when individuals are making the transition from
receiving care from attachment figures to gaining
the capacity to be providers of such care to oth-
ers. Notably, by far the strongest correlations of
adolescent attachment assessed via the AAI with
any other indicator of functioning have been with
a caregiving outcome: the security of the infant
offspring of adolescent mothers (Ward & Carlson,
1995). The AAI may be more strongly linked to
adolescents’ functioning with peers than to their
relationships with parents (as initial reports sug-
gest), because the AAI is most closely tapping a
behavioral system—for meeting others’ attach-
ment needs—more relevant for relating to peers
 19. The Attachment System in Adolescence 431
than to parents. The quality of close peer relation-
ships may well be determined by a teen’s capacity
to meet a peer’s emotional/attachment-like needs,
whereas a teen’s ability to meet the needs of a par-
ent is of minimal importance in healthy families.
Appropriately defining the boundaries of
the AAI as an indicator of adolescent attach-
ment processes has the advantage of potentially
redirecting our attention to a gaping hole that re-
mains in research on adolescent attachment: We
know remarkably little about the qualities of the
actual attachment relationships adolescents form.
Knowing that adolescents with autonomous states
of mind regarding attachment form relationships
with certain qualities is useful, but it is not the
same as being able to assess security or insecurity
in specific adolescent relationships (in part be-
cause secure teens may at times form insecure rela-
tionships with other teens). Our efforts to develop
sophisticated approaches to assessing relationship
security in adolescence (and beyond) are only just
beginning (Cooper et al., 1998). Attachment rela-
tionships in adolescence clearly differ dramatically
from those in infancy, as various new issues—from
power and control, to gender and sexuality, to the
increasing mutual capacity to provide comfort in
relationships—all rise to prominence. Given these
differences, it is not yet clear whether relationship
assessments in adolescence will ultimately closely
parallel Ainsworth’s categorizations of infant at-
tachment relationships, or whether they will need
to expand upon and modify these to address the
complexities of adult relationships.
From this perspective, an overly narrow focus
on issues of continuity in attachment from earlier
stages into adolescence, even of heterotypic con-
tinuity, may risk oversimplifying the constructs
in question. It may make more sense to think of
the attachment system as expanding and evolving
into multiple new forms in adolescence—­ranging
from attachment functions appearing temporarily
in passing relationships to complex new varieties
of long-term peer relationships—than to see it as
a homunculus moving from infancy into adoles-
cence with only growth and a change in outward
appearance.
To put this differently, the development of
attachment theory now needs to recapitulate indi-
vidual ontogeny. Adolescent development brings
striking growth in capacities to maintain a diverse
array of relationships meeting a diverse array of
potential attachment needs, and triggering numer-
ous systems (from primitive neural mechanisms to
higher-order cognitive functions) that are typi-
cally associated with the attachment system. So
too does our view of the attachment system during
this period need to continue to grow and expand,
to reflect this increasing complexity and sophisti-
cation.
Acknowledgment
This chapter was completed with the assistance of grants
from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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