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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

#71

Post by Broken_Hippo »

djmips wrote: post #20

I've observed children who have had tremendous close friends in childhood but were unable to recreate that in adulthood. Sometimes it's easier to make friends when you're 5.

Adults actually have to work at making new friends and few get any tips on how to go about doing so. I honestly didn't really get any until my late 30s or 40s - and that was mostly because I moved to Norway and for some folks, loneliness and lacking connections is a real issue.

Children have school. School gives you a shared experience to talk about and time to talk to others, both through actual coursework and play. Children are handed the tools to possibly make friends and they aren't even old enough to have decades of baggage and anxiety yet.

As an adult, you have to create those conditions. For many, work serves this role. Hobbies and regular activities (bowling, for example) help. Depending on the person, it can be online (Met my spouse this way - a silly online game back in the later text-based, formulaic MMORPG era). And you are a lot busier as an adult with more responsibilities filling your time. Of course it is harder as an adult.

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

#72

Post by thisislife2 »

elbear wrote: post #66
cheesecompiler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wanted to say the same: parents don't treat all children the same. For example, I have the feeling that the first child is the "practice" child. The parents learn from the mistakes made with them and don't repeat them with the children that follow. I don't know if there's any research to back this up and yes, I am a first born.

I've observed the same - unfortunately, first time parents are forced to try out all kinds of parenting experiments on their first-born, before they figure out how to be "good" parents. And subsequent kids, especially if they have them after some gap, get the benefit of this experience. Add to the woes of the first-born, they not only have to deal with normal sibling jealousy (of having to share their parents affection), but also resolve the emotional issue of why their younger siblings have an "easier" time (i.e. why their parents treat them "differently").

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

#73

Post by Den_VR »

parpfish wrote: post #38
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…

One study doesn’t definitively prove anything, but this is a 30 year longitudinal analysis with 700 participants. It’s way bigger than a typical study

Can you link the study itself? What are the demographics of the participants like, the usual that’s clustered on one culture?

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

#74

Post by toxik »

elbear wrote: post #66
cheesecompiler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wanted to say the same: parents don't treat all children the same. For example, I have the feeling that the first child is the "practice" child. The parents learn from the mistakes made with them and don't repeat them with the children that follow. I don't know if there's any research to back this up and yes, I am a first born.

I think sequel kids, more than anything, benefit from having a trailblazer to refer to. It's no doubt true that parents get better at the job, but kids learn from demonstration. Older sibling is hypersensitive and has a hard time keeping friends around -> I better learn to swallow my pride. That kind of thing.

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

#75

Post by toxik »

exe34 wrote: post #69

I believe this is called the post-treatment bias. If the causal arrow goes (mother-baby) -> (child-friends) -> (adult-attachment) and you include the middle one, you have already controlled for the first, and the effect disappears. Learning about the first tells you very little more once you have learnt the second.

In statistics we call it "conditional independence", attachment style is independent from maternal relationship if we know childhood friendship outcomes.

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

#76

Post by cyanydeez »

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…

That history: women are to blame

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

#77

Post by standardUser »

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 friendship until it happens. Then they have some experiences with those friends and those experiences become better predictors of future attachment style than the dynamic with the mother. This makes sense because in the realm of friends, these are their formative experiences. Mom may have had an impact (and does according to the study), but the bigger influence on how you deal with future friends is in how you experienced your formative friends.

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

#78

Post by reliablereason »

Attachment Styles is a very low dimensional way of observing something that has very high dimensionally.

When people use this type of dimensionality reduction you get problematic outcomes.

This type of phenomena will always keep happening. The world is complex and perceptually high dimensional. We try to understand it(the world) using low dimensional concepts and when those low dimensional concepts have low validity issues arise.

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

#79

Post by imtringued »

balamatom wrote: post #68
cheesecompiler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Remember how the modern "nucular" household is largely based on a modernization of the Roman patriarchal property distribution model, where the oldest male was ascribed the identities of all members of his household, and vice versa? That must've been extremely efficient for legal and accounting purposes, once. But, well, the only theory of mind anyone could develop in such circumstances involves grinding minds into f…

There is no purpose of the scapegoat organ. This is one of the biggest fallacies people have with regards to natural selection and economics.

Standard neoclassical economics theory tells people that they have perfect foresight and know the configuration/structure of all future possibilities. In other words, there are no unknown unknowns. You know everything you don't know yet.

People have the same belief with regards to natural selection being efficient. It just seemingly chooses the most efficient organisms.

In reality there is a developmental process with no guarantee of optimality or progress toward optimality. It is possible to get stuck in local maxima and it takes activation energy to get out of it.

The scapegoat organ exists because the perceived marginal cost of fixing and investigating an incident or problem is considered more expensive than deflecting blame.

The Iranians destroyed their water supply with scapegoats so trying to find a purpose in the scapegoat organ seems pretty insane. It's more like a weakness that leadership does not have a complete picture of the problems that its people are facing. You could argue that scapegoating is an expression of a lack of power. You have just enough power to blame others, but not enough to solve the problem.

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

#80

Post by bsenftner »

jcims wrote: post #17
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,…

Similar story here. Six schools by seventh grade. I think it does mess with you a bit.

Me too, 6 schools by 7th grade, with 3 city moves. I unfortunately had a stutter, which made forming friendships harder, I basically gravitated to the outcasts. And I read a shit ton; by the end of 4th grade I was finishing the entire classic section of the high school library. Reading way over my head, I joined an adult book club and had my first introductions to serious intellectual debates; which really put a distance between my same age peers and my interests. My stutter did not really get under control until my mid 20's.
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