IV. ATTACHMENT REPRESENTATIONS OF IMPRISONED MOTHERS AS RELATED TO CHILD CONTACT AND THE CAREGIVING ALLIANCE: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF CHILDREN'S PLACEMENT WITH MATERNAL GRANDMOTHERS

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between two potential correlates of an imprisoned mother's child-caregiver alliance and child contact: (1) an incarcerated mother's early attachment quality, as assessed by her recollected sense of warmth and acceptance by her own mother; and (2) the incarcerated mother's relationship to the caregiver (maternal grandmother vs. other caregiver). Consistent with previous research, we anticipated that placement of children with the maternal grandmother as well as perceived positive early attachment experiences would be associated with a more optimal coparenting alliance (Arditti & Few, 2008; Bouthillier et al., 2002; Collins & Feeney, 2004; Crowell et al., 2002; Roisman et al., 2007; Talbot et al., 2009). As a strong coparenting alliance is associated with higher levels of child contact for incarcerated samples (Loper et al., 2009; Poehlmann, Shlafer et al., 2008), we anticipated that effects would be present as well for contact measures. However, we focused our study on a potential interaction effect between these variables, such that the enhanced contact and alliance afforded by placement of children with the maternal grandmother would only be present if there was a collateral positive early attachment history between the incarcerated mother and her mother.