Journal of Family Psychology

2014, Vol. 28, No. 1, 118 123

2014 American Psychological Association

0893-3200/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0035736

BRIEF REPORT

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Early ChildParent Attachment and Peer Relations:

A Meta-Analysis of Recent Research
Susanna Pallini

Roberto Baiocco

University of Rome Tre

Sapienza University of Rome

Barry H. Schneider

Sheri Madigan

University of Ottawa

Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto

Leslie Atkinson
Ryerson University
A central tenet of Bowlbys attachment theory is that early child caregiver attachment is reflected in the
quality of the childs interpersonal relationships throughout life. Schneider, Atkinson, and Tardif (2001)
conducted a meta-analysis of studies conducted up to 1998 to corroborate that contention. They found a
significant but small to moderate effect size (r .20). Their finding that studies of friendship bonds had
higher effect sizes than studies of other interpersonal relationships has important theoretical ramifications. The present brief report is a meta-analysis that covers research conducted for the same purpose
since 1998. The sample consists of 44 studies with a total of 8505 participants. The overall effect size
r of .19 (adjusted r .12; 95% confidence interval, .08 .17) in the current study was similar in
magnitude to the effect size reported in the 2001 meta-analysis, documenting consistency in the
predictive power of attachment theory. However, we failed to replicate the moderating effect of
friendship. One possible explanation for these findings is that the friendships of school-age children and
adolescents no longer invoke very high levels of intimacy. Effect sizes are higher in studies conducted
outside North America than in U.S.- and Canada-based studies.
Keywords: attachment, meta-analysis, peer relations

the many changes inherent in childrens cognitive, social, and

emotional development. Undaunted by such obstacles, researchers
invested heavily in research testing the varied outcomes linked
with early attachment. Arguing for theoretical clarity, Thompson
and Raikes (2003) dispute the contention that early attachment
should necessarily be linked to all aspects of subsequent adjustment. Instead, attachment might be expected to predict intimate
family and peer relationships most specifically. This contention
must be weighed against evidence that early attachment affects
humans fundamentally and even physiologically (Diamond & Fagundes, 2010). This suggests a wide array of sequelae, attenuating
arguments for a narrower position.
Schneider, Atkinson, and Tardif (2001) presented a metaanalysis of 63 studies conducted up to 1998 on effect size linking
attachment and childrens peer relations. They reported an overall
effect size of r .20. This effect size was not moderated by
method used to measure attachment. There were two important
participant effects: mean effect size was significantly larger for
middle childhood versus preschool aged children. Of considerable
theoretical import, effect size was significantly higher for outcome
measures pertaining to close friendship than for other less intimate
aspects of peer relations. We present herein a meta-analysis of

Caregiver child attachment influences the quality of close interpersonal relationships later in the childs life (Bowlby, 1973).
However, the complexity of hypothesized intervening mechanisms
and their abstractness make it difficult to translate the complex
components of this theory into empirical research (Thompson &
Raikes, 2003). Perhaps the most challenging obstacle is the reality
that internal working modelsmental representations of the attachment bondsare not readily amenable to empirical measurement. Further, the processes linking early child caregiver attachment to behavior and relationships later in life act in interplay with

Susanna Pallini, Department of Education Sciences, University of Rome

Tre, Rome, Italy; Roberto Baiocco, Department of Developmental and
Social Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Barry H.
Schneider, School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada; Sheri Madigan, Hospital for Sick Children and the Department of
Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Leslie Atkinson, Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susanna
Pallini, Via Milazzo 11b, 00185 Rome, Italy. E-mail: susanna.pallini@
uniroma3.it
118

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ATTACHMENT AND PEER RELATIONS

studies that appeared since publication of the Schneider et al.

(2001) article. Recent studies reflect several methodological refinements, including growing recognition that parent child attachment can be disorganized, such that many children who would
have been considered secure in earlier studies are now classified as
insecure. The methodology of meta-analysis has also advanced
dramatically (Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009).
Importantly, recent societal changes have sometimes been seen
as attenuating the intimacy inherent in peer relationships, especially close friendships. Goodwin (2009) notes that intimacy may
be incompatible with the individualism that accompanies the
modernizing transformation of many contemporary societies. In
their sociological treatise on trends in the history of friendship since
World War II, Peel, Reed, and Walker (2009) argue that the last half
of the 20th century witnessed the historic peak of the importance of
voluntary close friendships, at the expense of the clan and extended
family. It is not clear, however, that friendship ever became as
important to boys and men as it did to girls and women. One
reason cited for a possible more recent decline is that social
interaction increasingly occurs in larger, more anonymous and
lonely communities, schools, and institutions than previously. The
lack of rich social interaction at the group level fails to spawn
intimate relationships at the dyadic level. However, the most
salient reason is that, especially for young people, a greater portion
of social interaction is occurring by means of electronic communication. Terkle (2011) presents an influential treatise on online
relationships entitled Alone Together: Why We Expect More of
Technology and Less of Each Other. She observed that, although
it has become easy to dub an online interactions friendships, the
relationships bear little resemblance to the traditional notions of
friendship and are, in particular, devoid of intimacy. If intimacy is
declining, attachment theory may be less relevant to relationships
than when it was first formulated. The distinction discussed earlier
between narrow and broad outcomes of attachment becomes less
compelling. However, Schneider and Amichai-Hamburger (2010)
observe that the Internet may in fact facilitate close interpersonal
relating by individuals who have trouble being intimate in faceto-face encounters. In any case, Fletcher, Simpson, Campbell, and
Overall (2013) hasten to highlight that intimacy is programmed
into the interpersonal relationships of humans as a result of a
lengthy evolutionary process that is not easily modified.
Based on theory and on the results reported by Schneider et al.
(2001), we hypothesized that overall effect size would be significantly different from zero, with larger effect sizes for older children than for preschoolers. We also hypothesized that there would
be a significantly larger effect for studies focusing on friendship
than for large-group peer relationships.

Method
Selection of Studies
To generate samples comparable with the 2001 meta-analysis,
we used the same keywords in searching PSYCINFO, PUBMED
and ProQuest Dissertations. We also scanned the references of
articles retrieved and contacted researchers working in this area.
Our search included studies available between 1999 and 2012.
Inclusion/exclusion criteria were identical to those used in the
2001 meta-analysis: original data, measure of attachment to a

119

parent other than self-report, collected before the child reached age
18, include a quantitative measure of childrens peer relations
other than self-report, feature assessment of attachment and peer
relations, include data on securely and insecurely attached participants or a continuous measure of attachment, written in English or
another language understood by our research team (French, Italian,
Spanish). These criteria resulted in inclusion of 44 studies with
8505 participants. Each study was coded for the following: a)
attachment measure (e.g., Strange situation, Q-sort); b) attachment
figure (e.g., father, mother); c) dimension(s) of peer relations (e.g.,
peer-directed aggression, friendship, prosociality); d) source of
information about peer relations (e.g., observation, peer report,
teacher report); e) degree of familiarity (peers or friends); f) gender
of child; g) mean age of participants when attachment and h) peer
relations were measured; i) time between the measurement of
attachment and peer relations; j) specific subject characteristics
(e.g., diagnosed atypical behavior, low SES, parents divorced); k)
country; l) publication date; and m) dissemination (i.e., journal
article, thesis, book). Agreement on coding and application of
inclusion/exclusion criteria was established by having the second
author corate; agreement between first and second authors was
94%.

Meta-Analytic Procedures
We calculated effect size as r, the correlation between attachment security and peer relations outcome. Where studies involved
multiple outcomes (e.g., popularity, leadership, withdrawal), we
calculated a mean effect size, such that each study is represented
by one effect in a given meta-analysis. However, many studies
included measures of both friendship and peer relations, such that
the exclusion of either would result in substantial data loss. Because the distinction between close friendships and relations with
other peers may be particularly important (Schneider et al., 2001),
we followed Hallion and Ruscios (2011) strategy of conducting
three nonindependent meta-analyses. The first included all peer
relations studies, the second included only close friendships, and
the third involved only peers who were not close friends.
We conducted analyses as outlined by Borenstein et al. (2009)
using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Version 2.0 software (Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2005). We used random
effects analyses. All effect sizes were weighted by sample size. We
adjusted the observed values to account for potential publication
bias using Duval and Tweedies (2000) trim-and-fill procedures.
We used Q-statistics to assess heterogeneity of effect sizes across
studies. We used Q-statistics and method of moments regression
analyses to assess for moderating effects in the full sample (Borenstein et al., 2009), when the number of studies warranted it; we
did not pursue the search for moderators in the close friendship and
nonclose friendship subsamples because of low power.

Results
Effect Sizes Involving Total Sample
Random effects analyses indicated an overall effect size of r
.19, p .001; 95% confidence interval (CI) .15.23 (see Figure
1). Duval and Tweedies trim-and-fill procedure resulted in an
estimated unbiased effect size of r .12, CI .08 .17. Effect

PALLINI, BAIOCCO, SCHNEIDER, MADIGAN, AND ATKINSON

120

Meta Analysis

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Study name

Verschueren & Marcoen, 1999

Bohlin et al., 2000
Contreras et al., 2000
DeMulder et al., 2000
Attili, 2001
Denham et al., 2001
Granot & Mayseless, 2001
Allen et al., 2002
Bar-Haim et al., 2002
Burns, 2002
Schmidt et al., 2002
Carlson et al., 2004
McElwain & Volling, 2004
Milligan, 2004
Wood et al., 2004
Zimmermann, 2004
Allen et al. 2005
Bohlin et al., 2005
Booth la Force et al., 2005
Monks et al., 2005
Rydell et al., 2005
Szewczyk-Sokolowski et al., 2005
Bosquet & Egeland, 2006
Laible, 2006
Allen et al., 2007
Balent ine, 2007
Simpson et al., 2007
Wood, 2007
Dykas et al., 2008
Kerns et al., 2008
Agnor, 2009
Bolin & Hagekull, 2009
Chango et al., 2009
Lindsey et al., 2009
Shomaker & Furman, 2009
Smeekens et al., 2009(1)
Smeekens et al., 2009(2)
Stacks & Oshio, 2009
Vu, 2009
McElwain et al., 2011
Roskam et al., 2011
Vaughn et al., 2011
Verissimo et al., 2011
Barone & Lionetti, 2012

Statistics for each study

Correlation

Lower
limit

0.298
0.252
0.310
0.195
0.541
0.215
0.195
0.210
-0.293
0.064
-0.204
0.202
0.190
-0.001
0.375
0.466
0.120
0.320
0.080
0.211
0.193
0.250
0.209
0.451
0.208
0.243
0.207
0.430
0.194
0.004
0.110
0.260
0.050
0.160
0.209
0.190
0.191
0.054
0.087
0.052
0.310
0.240
0.240
0.152
0.164

0.084
0.054
0.065
-0.008
0.408
0.054
0.011
0.036
-0.503
-0.237
-0.459
0.059
-0.183
-0.255
0.058
0.193
-0.025
0.121
-0.075
0.019
0.008
0.054
0.053
0.200
0.058
0.094
-0.016
0.089
0.053
-0.187
-0.106
0.087
-0.095
-0.062
0.072
0.004
0.005
-0.177
-0.282
-0.003
0.136
-0.082
-0.101
-0.097
0.138

Upper
limit
0.486
0.431
0.520
0.383
0.652
0.365
0.367
0.372
-0.051
0.354
0.082
0.336
0.515
0.253
0.623
0.672
0.260
0.494
0.231
0.388
0.365
0.427
0.355
0.646
0.349
0.382
0.411
0.681
0.328
0.195
0.316
0.418
0.193
0.367
0.338
0.364
0.364
0.279
0.434
0.107
0.465
0.516
0.531
0.383
0.190

Correlation and 95% CI

Z-Value p-Value
2.697
2.484
2.462
1.884
6.878
2.603
2.072
2.355
-2.357
0.410
-1.403
2.763
0.999
-0. 008
2.299
3.194
1.627
3.093
1.011
2.153
2.041
2.489
2.615
3.367
2.703
3.156
1.819
2.434
2.680
0.041
1.000
2.915
0.673
1.416
2.977
1.999
2.010
0.455
0.453
1.837
3.422
1.469
1.385
1.196
12.199

0.007
0.013
0.014
0.060
0.000
0.009
0.038
0.019
0.018
0.682
0.161
0.006
0.318
0.994
0.022
0.001
0.104
0.002
0.312
0.031
0.041
0.013
0.009
0.001
0.007
0.002
0.069
0.015
0.007
0.968
0.317
0.004
0.501
0.157
0.003
0.046
0.044
0.649
0.650
0.066
0.001
0.142
0.166
0.232
0.000
-1.00

-0.50

0.00

Favours A

Figure 1.

0.50

1.00

Favours B

Forest plots showing the association between attachment and peer relations.

sizes across studies were heterogeneous, Q(43) 99.92, p .001.

Moderator analyses revealed a significant difference in effect size,
Q(1) 8.66, p .01, between North American (n 29; ES
.16; CI .12.20) and European (n 13; ES .28; CI
.21.35) samples. Although there was a nonsignificant decline in
effect size over time, neither this nor any other moderating variables (attachment measure, attachment metric [classificatory vs.
dimensional], attachment figure, average ages at assessment of
attachment and outcome, time between attachment and outcome

measures, source of the outcome measure, percent males in the

sample) proved significant.

Effect Size for Close Friendship Outcomes Only

We conducted a supplementary analysis using only the data
from the friendship variables. The mean effect of .17 (SD .13)
was not substantially different from the pattern of results that
emerged in the main analyses. Duval and Tweedies trim-and-fill

ATTACHMENT AND PEER RELATIONS

procedure resulted in slight modification, with an estimated unbiased effect size of r .14, CI .07.19.

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Discussion
The overall average effect size in the new sample is similar to
that reported by Schneider et al. in 2001. This bolsters the contention that early childparent bonds are related to childrens
subsequent relationships with peers. There are, however, some
important differences in the moderators of effect size in the two
meta-analyses. We failed to replicate the previous finding that
effect sizes are higher for friendship than for other aspects of peer
relations. Accordingly, the following section pertains specifically
to the two subsamples on friendship although the sample sizes are
too small for statistical comparison. The discussion concludes with
some remarks on the implications of the small-to-moderate overall
effect, which emerged in both this and the previous meta-analysis.
There were comparable numbers of friendship studies in the two
samples, 12 in the 2001 article, and 11 in the present sample. Thus,
although the construct of friendship received more emphasis in
1990s than previously, this enthusiasm did not translate into more
research. The two samples are similar in terms of the relative
proportions of Q-sort and strange situation methods for measuring
attachment and the proportions of measurement strategies in assessing peer relations. There was, however, a substantial age
difference between the friendship subsamples in this (M 69
months) and the earlier meta-analysis (M 41 months). Age
differences cannot be invoked to explain the failure to find the
expected higher effect for friendship than for other aspects of peer
relations because age difference is in the wrong direction; intimacy
increases rather than decreases in peer relationships from school
age onward (e.g., Berndt, 2007). Therefore, the most likely explanation of this failure to replicate is that the friendships of schoolage children and adolescents are less intimate than they once were,
possibly because of the societal changes discussed earlier. Because
most contentions that intimacy is declining in relationships pertain
to the United States, this explanation might account for the significant cultural moderation that emerged only in the current
sample. It is important to remember that our nonNorth American
samples are mostly from European and Mediterranean cultures
where family life is particularly intensive and influential (Stanton,
1995) and not from Japan, for example, where extremely close and
interdependent attachment dynamics may lead to insecure attachment in the Western sense (Rothbaum, Rosen, Ujiie & Uchida,
2002). We present this interpretation of our findings with some
reticence because of the limited sample size.
Although we focused on attachment, attachment might not be
solely responsible for the predicting outcome but might predict
outcome together with other simultaneous processes (Thompson &
Raikes, 2003). This is but one possible interpretation, however, of
a recurrent pattern of small effects. Another possibility is that the
effect sizes do not fully reflect the impact of early attachment
because of the many complications mentioned at the start of the
introduction in reducing attachment theory to elements that can be
measured realistically. At this point, we can assume that the link
between attachment security and peer relations is established.
Intriguing issues remain pertaining to the potentially changing
association between attachment and close relationships and the
role that cultural factors might play.

121

It is important to bear in mind several limitations of this study.

Some of the cell sizes were small, making it difficult to detect
possible moderators of effect size. Our decision to separate more
recent studies from those in the original meta-analysis is consistent
with our objective of conducting a true replication. We established
that the important moderator of friendship is not differentially
related to the ESs for attachment in the sample of recent studies.
This update is of substantial theoretical importance. However, our
decision may have obscured other potential moderators of ES that
might have emerged in a combined sample. Finally, our exclusion
criteria led to the omission of a number of problematic studies,
mostly conducted with adolescents, in which both attachment and
peer relations were measured by self-report.

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Received May 23, 2013

Revision received November 27, 2013
Accepted December 5, 2013