Representations of Attachment to Father in the Narratives of Preschool Girls in Post-Divorce Families: Implications for Family Relationships and Social Development

This study used the Attachment Story Completion Task-Revised (ASCT-R) (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990), a representational measure of attachment security, to examine characteristics of preschool-aged girls' narratives associated with portrayals of attachment to the father. The children's (n = 27) parents had been divorced or legally separated for at least 2 years, and they lived in the primary custody of their mothers. We had previously discovered that girls' responses to the ASCT-R differed from those of boys in unexpected ways. Whereas boys' representations of child-father attachment varied positively with teacher ratings of social behavior in child-care settings, the opposite was the case for girls. Girls who portrayed children's attachment to the father more frequently were rated lower in social competence, contrary to expectations. A more detailed analysis of responses to the ASCT-R suggests that girls' representational attachment behavior toward the father was associated with narrative representations of both parents as unavailable, family instability, and concerns for the father's well-being.