Parental Attachment Style

Each year, in the United States, parents, guardians, or caregivers are abusing and neglecting their children at an alarming rate (Cicchetti, 2004). Because of this maltreatment, these children are removed from their parent's home and living in substitute care placements: institutions, group homes, foster homes, or kinship care homes. When this separation between parent and child occurs and placement happens, it is imperative that a purposeful and planful system of visitation be scheduled between parent and child for a successful future reunification to take place.Visitation is a powerful method to encourage attachment, bonding, and emotional well-being of children with their parents. The research supports the fact that if parents visit their children on a regular basis, children are often times reunified with their families. The problem, therein, lies when parents do not visit their children on a regular basis, and children are not being reunified with their family.In this study, inferential statistics were used to make tentative generalizations, for this population, concerning the relationship patterns between parent's attachment styles and their attendance records at parental visits. The experimental design correlated the most prominent attachment style, based on the five factors in the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ) designed by Feeney and Noller, and the parent's visitation pattern of attending or not attending their parental weekly visit. The sample consisted of 172 participants and both qualitative and quantitative statistical analysis was utilized to interpret the data. Five one-Way ANOVA analyses were conducted to investigate the differences between the ASQ scales. The interview data and a demographic form expanded upon the statistical analysis and strengthened the quantitative data related to this problematic social phenomenon.The attachment style of each participant was identified which provided theoretical and practical implications for therapeutic intervention and visitation protocol, which are presented in this research. One predominate theme in the qualitative analysis revealed that parents are struggling with life issues, which ultimately influences attendance at their weekly visits with their children. Future implications and program recommendations were identified. Further research needs to be completed to address the issues raised in this study.