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Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

nautil.us

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Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#101

Post by bravura »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #92
taurath wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study itself doesn't say anything of the sort that the article title and this thread title do. I gaurantee you that if you polled any number of therapists what people's hangups are about it would be more likely to be the parents. Everyone I know is an inheritor of some significant amount of their family's generational trauma.

Tiny anecdote - it was only after being a parent for a decade or so that, when doing family history, I realised that my dad's parenting style -- which influenced my own so much -- was affected by being essentially fatherless; he had no direct model to base his own parenting on. WWII affecting children's upbringing ~70 years later. I think he did a great job when I was younger, but we haven't maintained a strong bond…

Call your father. And just chit chat for ten minutes.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#102

Post by DFHippie »

KerrAvon wrote: post #21
DFHippie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate a bit: your parenting is much more likely to affect how your kids parent their kids. And, for better or for worse, mostly what they'll be doing is avoiding the mistakes you made. Your mom was distant and judgmental? You'll be super attentive and supportive, assuming your kids need what you wanted. And quite likely you'll overshoot the mark and set up a pitfall your kids will avoid when it's their turn. A…

Is this anecdata/personal folklore/"common sense" or is this based on science? It sounds like the former, tbh. Things tend to be more complex than this.

I think it's pretty obviously me pontificating from personal observations. Did you see the "hakuna matata"? We're allowed to do that here.

And yes, sure, it's more complicated than that. It's always more complicated. It's unlikely the final word on any topic will fit in an HN comment.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#103

Post by em-bee »

standardUser wrote: post #77
taurath wrote: post #28

No, one study doesn’t upend the last few decades of understanding of emotional attachment. The study simply says that ability to connect w friends is more predictive than observations they made of apparent attachment of parents. This happens much later so of course it’s more predictive of the actual end effects - that’s when attachment styles actually show up for the first time. Kids grow up to be very adaptive towar…

It kind of makes sense. We don't go out into the world thinking "ok, time to meet more my moms!". We can't treat anyone else like our mom, and vice versa. The mother-child relationship is probably the most important and influential for most people, but it's a complete anomaly. Friends are not an anomaly, their pretty typical, and since Mom and Dad are not friends, a young child has learned very little firsthand about…

i didn't start having friends until i entered university. and i spent my whole life searching for the kind of relationship that i wanted but didn't get from my parents. only a few years ago i realized that this is what i was searching for, and then i finally found it by realizing that i could be the parent to my kids that i had wanted my parents to be to me. my actual parents are more like friends to me than parents.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#104

Post by tootie »

taurath wrote: post #28

No, one study doesn’t upend the last few decades of understanding of emotional attachment. The study simply says that ability to connect w friends is more predictive than observations they made of apparent attachment of parents. This happens much later so of course it’s more predictive of the actual end effects - that’s when attachment styles actually show up for the first time. Kids grow up to be very adaptive towar…

I read the same conclusion in a NurtureShock published 15 years ago and they cited similar studies.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#105

Post by 0_____0 »

brabel wrote: post #63
0_____0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a joke here... Q: How do you make friends in Boston? A: Same way everyone else does. In kindergarten.

This would be very apt for Scandinavia too.

Seems like some of these sayings get around

"We've got two seasons: summer and construction" - do you have that one too?

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#106

Post by pedalpete »

cheesecompiler wrote: post #33
pedalpete wrote: post #5

My first reaction was to refute this, but I think I've convinced myself this may be correct, assuming attachment styles are the right frame. I've been painted with the Avoidant brush, and logically it makes sense, broken home, removed from mother, moved regularly changing schools once a year for 5 years. However, my siblings are the opposite. We come from the same house, they didn't change schools as often as I did,…

The family is a system, with different roles played by each participant. For instance, in toxic families, there is often one scapegoat, with an anxious attachment style, that affords the avoidant types in the family to participate in delusions. What are the dynamics like of everyone in your family?

I am the scapegoat, though more commonly referred to as the black sheep.

I am not anxious, I'm the avoidant one. I don't think any of my siblings are anxious either.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#107

Post by makeitdouble »

sishabsb wrote: post #84
makeitdouble wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially beneficial as well, if they had less toxicity and/or had stronger family bonds than otherwise. There's so many variable, I think we can only say they could be different, who knows if t will be for better or worse, or neither.

While technically correct, painting these outcomes as so close to equally likely that we can’t make a call is sinister. Locking people in their homes and away from social interactions for years amidst the background of a pandemic is almost certainly a net negative. We do similar things to violent prisoners, mentally insane, or humans we’re looking to break. There should be an extremely high risk for the next pandemic…

> We do similar things to violent prisoners, mentally insane, or humans we’re looking to break.

That perception of prisons and mental wards is fundamentally broken IMHO. Perhaps that's how it's run in most of the US, but the base principal is reeducation and reform, not punishment.

The core idea is to lock people away because keeping them around is a net negative, and bringing them back to society so they can reintegrate.

Which is modeled after the educational system, because prisons is supposed to be reeducation, if you want to draw parallels.

> Locking people in their homes and away from social interactions for years

Did any country do that or intent to ? We had strict lockdowns and it was for weeks at most, with social interactions still allowed but at reduced scope (limiting the contact radius to a minimum of 10~15km or so)

China famously was more heavy handed and the most it lasted was two month.

> so close to equally likely that we can’t make a call is sinister.

Humans are complex, and it rarely works the way we envision it, especially when it comes to social phenomenons. Think about the opposite natural experiment: people who can't go home and stay in a shelter and have to interact with hundreds of people for weeks. This is also an extremely traumatic event that countries with frequent natural disasters are working hard at solving.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#108

Post by balamatom »

aidenn0 wrote: post #90
balamatom wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the etiology?

Entered foster care at 2 due to abuse and neglect; we were her fourth placement in 7 months; weekly mandated visits with neglectful mother and monthly mandated visits with abusive grandmother for 2 years before termination of parental rights. She had nightmares until 3am after every visit with grandmother. We adopted her at 5.

This sounds terrible. Thank you for saving her.

Re: Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

#109

Post by aidenn0 »

balamatom wrote: post #108
aidenn0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entered foster care at 2 due to abuse and neglect; we were her fourth placement in 7 months; weekly mandated visits with neglectful mother and monthly mandated visits with abusive grandmother for 2 years before termination of parental rights. She had nightmares until 3am after every visit with grandmother. We adopted her at 5.

This sounds terrible. Thank you for saving her.

Believe me, we didn't save her; she's doing as well as she is because of the hard work she put in (particularly in her later teenage years). I hope the environment we provided helped her in that, but I don't think I can take much of the credit.
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