Examining Infant-Toddler Teachers' Attachment Style, Teacher-Child Relationships, and Children's Social-Emotional Adjustment

Introduction: Though there is research investigating young children’s attachment with their childcare providers, there is little research examining the attachment styles of infant and toddler teachers, or how teachers’ own attachment may influence their relationships with children (Riley, 2009) and young children’s social-emotional adjustment.  Recognizing that attachment style influences a myriad of relationships in life, that early sensitive caregiving is especially important for young children’s social-emotional development, and that, within the US, most infants and toddlers are cared for outside the home (Child Care Aware, 2015), understanding how teachers’ attachment styles may impact their caregiving relationships with children as well as children’s behavior problems and social competence is critical to supporting a positive trajectory for very young children in childcare. 

Methods: As part of a larger study investigating parent-teacher-child relationships, with a sample of ninety 12-to-36 month old children, and 40 infant/toddler teachers, from 10 different childcare centers, we examined how teachers’ attachment style (i.e., attachment anxiety and avoidance) as measured by the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire (Brennan, Clark & Shaver, 1998) could both directly predict children’s externalizing, internalizing, dysregulation and social competence as measured by the Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (Carter & Briggs-Gowan, 2006), and indirectly predict these risks or assets via teacher-child closeness and conflict as measured by the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta, 1992).

Results: Although we did not find any direct association between teachers’ attachment style and children’s social-emotional functioning, we found that teachers with higher attachment anxiety, reported more conflicts with children, which in turn predicted greater externalizing and dysregulation in children after controlling for children’s age, sex, and the total time with the teacher. The standardized coefficients of the indirect effects were .21 (p <.05) for externalizing and .15 (p < .05) for dysregulation. The model fit was excellent, χ² (10) = 9.45, p = .50, RMSEA = .00, CFI = 1.00.    

Conclusions: Teachers’ attachment anxiety is another key aspect of their psychological well-being, and identifying teachers who are risk for developing more conflictual relationships with infants and toddlers is important, so that we may intervene early to establish more sensitive caregiving.  Recognizing that early behavior problems are not transient (Briggs-Gowan et al., 2006), working with more anxiously attached teachers to decrease teacher-child conflict and increase closeness can help support infants’ and toddler’s positive social-emotional adjustment.