Latent profiles of parental attachment styles and their associations with parenting behaviors among parents of school-aged children.

Authors

• Wang Y
• Lin X
• Zhang X
• Ma X
• Bao C
• Chen X

Publication

Frontiers in psychology · 2026

• doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1691655
• pmid: 42157984
• pmcid: PMC13180531

Study type: Cross-sectional study

Population: families/children

Abstract / summary

This study utilized Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify attachment style latent profiles among parents of school-aged children and examine their association with parenting behaviors. Analysis of attachment anxiety and avoidance dimensions revealed four distinct parental profiles: low anxiety/avoidance, high anxiety/moderate avoidance, moderate anxiety/avoidance, and high anxiety/avoidance. Low anxiety/avoidance parents demonstrated significantly greater acceptance than all other latent profiles. Conversely, parents in high anxiety profiles exhibited significantly more rejecting behaviors than low anxiety latent profile. Notably, no sex differences emerged in profile distribution or parenting patterns. These findings reveal heterogeneous parental attachment configurations and establish attachment style as a robust correlate of parenting. This highlights the critical link between parental attachment representations and caregiving practices.

What this does not prove / limitations

• le for choosing LPA in our study: it directly addresses the limitation of a priori categorization by capturing the fine grained, unobserved heterogeneity in parental attachment that traditional classification methods miss. LPA is performed based on t
• ting behaviors.2.Materials and methodsThis study employed a cross-sectional design and utilized Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to examine the associations between parental attachment profiles and parenting behaviors.2.1.ParticipantsParticipants were recruited via
• aining informed consent, participants completed a series of self-report measures. Funds were allocated to the classes of the participants’ children for the development of a class book corner. All aspects of the study, including the consent form, were
• Collins and Read (1990) and revised by Collins (1996), this self-report measure comprises three subscales (closeness, dependence, anxiety) with 18 items rated on a five-point Likert scale. This scale was culturally adapted for Chinese populations by W

Topics

parenting, behavior, development, education, attachment, adolescence, fathers