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 Parent Attachment and the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire. Despite the fact that attachment is generally conceptualized as a unidimensional construct, we found little concordance between positive aspects of attachment (i.e., trust and communication) and alienation from parents. Although alienation, especially from fathers, was a negative correlate of interpersonal competence, our results indicated little correspondence between parent-child attachment and the positive aspects of adolescent social competence. Both positive and negative dimensions of parent-adolescent attachment were correlated with adolescent involvement in extracurricular peer activity. Parents seen by the adolescents as close and trusting had negative opinions of the adolescents' best friends.