Healthy attachment for the parents? An investigation on the association between attachment parenting and parental mental health.
Abstract
Introduction. Attachment parenting (AP) became popular for it promotes responsive caregiving, but has been criticized for over-extensively translating attachment research into challenging parenting standards, mirroring detrimental intensive-parenting beliefs that adversely affect parental health. Meanwhile, evidence on AP remains limited and assessments of AP-beliefs and AP-practice are lacking. This study aims to develop and validate an AP-questionnaire and test the associations between AP and parental mental health and explore the mediating role of intensive-parenting beliefs. Methods. In a preregistered cross-sectional online-survey, 1664 parents (98.5% mothers) of children aged up to six years answered an extensive item-list assessing AP-beliefs and AP implementation into practice, an intensive parenting questionnaire, and mental health measures. Confirmatory factor analyses were used for AP-questionnaire validation and correlation- and mediation-analyses for exploring the association between AP and mental health. Results. A 26-item AP-questionnaire was extracted that assesses AP-beliefs and AP- practice, both for the global AP-approach and seven individual core-principles. AP-indicators consistently showed small/minimal correlations with better mental health, whereas mediation analyses revealed parallel, opposing pathways: a positive, direct association from AP to mental health (possibly explained via parental fulfilment) and adverse indirect pathways through intensive-parenting beliefs (challenge-/self-sacrifice and essentialist-beliefs). Conclusion. AP may be neither uniformly beneficial nor harmful. Rather, it can foster parental fulfilment which increases parental well-being, but also instil dysfunctional beliefs about sacrifice and unavoidable strain that increase parental-stress. To improve evidence-based personalized parenting-recommendations, longitudinal research is needed to disentangle when AP fosters positive parental identity and when it reinforces parental vulnerabilities.
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BibTeX
@misc{schlier2026healthy,
title = {{Healthy attachment for the parents? An investigation on the association between attachment parenting and parental mental health.}},
author = {Björn Schlier and Hanna Laura Meder and Mira-Pauline Grapentin and Nora Imlau},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/8f5wm_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8f5wm_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Healthy attachment for the parents? An investigation on the association between attachment parenting and parental mental health.
AU - Björn Schlier
AU - Hanna Laura Meder
AU - Mira-Pauline Grapentin
AU - Nora Imlau
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/8f5wm_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8f5wm_v1/
AB - Introduction. Attachment parenting (AP) became popular for it promotes responsive caregiving, but has been criticized for over-extensively translating attachment research into challenging parenting standards, mirroring detrimental intensive-parenting beliefs that adversely affect parental health. Meanwhile, evidence on AP remains limited and assessments of AP-beliefs and AP-practice are lacking. This study aims to develop and validate an AP-questionnaire and test the associations between AP and parental mental health and explore the mediating role of intensive-parenting beliefs. Methods. In a preregistered cross-sectional online-survey, 1664 parents (98.5% mothers) of children aged up to six years answered an extensive item-list assessing AP-beliefs and AP implementation into practice, an intensive parenting questionnaire, and mental health measures. Confirmatory factor analyses were used for AP-questionnaire validation and correlation- and mediation-analyses for exploring the association between AP and mental health. Results. A 26-item AP-questionnaire was extracted that assesses AP-beliefs and AP- practice, both for the global AP-approach and seven individual core-principles. AP-indicators consistently showed small/minimal correlations with better mental health, whereas mediation analyses revealed parallel, opposing pathways: a positive, direct association from AP to mental health (possibly explained via parental fulfilment) and adverse indirect pathways through intensive-parenting beliefs (challenge-/self-sacrifice and essentialist-beliefs). Conclusion. AP may be neither uniformly beneficial nor harmful. Rather, it can foster parental fulfilment which increases parental well-being, but also instil dysfunctional beliefs about sacrifice and unavoidable strain that increase parental-stress. To improve evidence-based personalized parenting-recommendations, longitudinal research is needed to disentangle when AP fosters positive parental identity and when it reinforces parental vulnerabilities.
ER -