Parent, infant, and social-contextual antecedents of father-son attachment security

To examine antecedents of infant-father attachment security, 126 fathers and their sons were seen in the Strange Situation. Questionnaire measurements obtained 3 months earlier of constructs implicated by Belsky's (1984) model of the determinants of parenting were examined as correlates of attachment classifications (i.e., father personality, infant temperament, marital quality, social support, work-family relations). Fathers of secure infants were more extraverted and agreeable than fathers of insecure infants, tended to have more positive marriages, and experienced more positive emotional spillover between work and family. Infants classified as insecure-avoidant received more positive temperament ratings than insecure-resistant sons. Overall, the more infant, parent, and social-contextual assets the family had, the greater the probability of a secure attachment.