My thesis focuses on the relationship between the teenager’s style of attachment to his or her parents and the type of romantic relationships experienced by the young person.
LOVE RELATIONSHIPS
Adolescence has been shown to be the period during which intimate and loving relationships actually take hold (Karney et al., 2007). Researchers have also noted that it is possible to categorize relationships into two types (Furman, Ho & Low, 2007). The first type is called “occasional encounters” because it includes different indices such as the total number of people frequented during their lifetime, the frequency of these encounters, the perception of self as a “flirt” and the number of people. The second type is called “serious romance” and is composed of indicators such as the duration of romantic relationships, the proportion of those that have proved to be long and the satisfaction that results from these romantic relationships.
Then, based on this model of Furman, Ho and Low (2007), proposing the existence of two types of romantic relationships, we wanted to examine their association with attachment to parents.
ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIPS
There are three styles of attachment to adolescence.
The first is secure attachment. Regarding romantic relationships, adolescents with secure attachment will be able to develop their romantic skills to integrate emotional and cognitive sharing and passion into their relationships (Delage, 2009).
The second is the detached insecure attachment. These young people will inhibit their protection needs and feelings of vulnerability in order to rely solely on themselves (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003). This fear of dependence and attachment to others complicates love relationships for these adolescents.
The third is the insecure attachment concerned. This attachment style leads the adolescent to develop relational addictive behaviours and to seek exclusive relationships. These adolescents may develop jealousy and possessiveness behaviours that result in low quality in the love relationship (Delage, 2009).
METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study is to determine whether, during adolescence, the style of attachment to mother and father is associated with the type of romantic relationship experienced by the adolescent.
For this purpose, self-assessment scales evaluating the type of privileged romantic relationships (Kindelberger, Mallet and Galharret, submitted) as well as self-assessment scales measuring attachment to mother and father (ARSQ de Scharfe, 1997) were used.
These questionnaires were administered to 159 students aged 13.5 to 16.1 years.
RESULTS
The results confirm that girls score higher on items referring to serious romances than boys, and that adolescents with a detached attachment to their mothers experience more casual dating relationships. However, the other part of our hypotheses are invalidated in part because of the poor validity of our tool for assessing adolescents’ attachment.
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useful words :
- occasional encounters : rencontres occasionnelles
- rely solely on themselves : ne compter que sur eux-mêmes
- self-assessment scales : échelles d’auto-évaluation
- assess : évaluer
Ressources :
- Karney, B.R., Beckett, M.K., Collins, R.L., & Shaw, R. (2007). Adolescent Romantic Relationships as Precursors of Healthy Adult Marriages: A Review of Theory, Research, and Programs. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
- Furman, W., Ho, M.J., & Low, S.M. (2007). The Rocky Road of Adolescent Romantic Experience: Dating and Adjustment. In Friends, Lovers and Groups: Key Relationships in Adolescence (pp. 61-80). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- Delage, M. (2009). Comment s’attache-t-on dans un couple ?. Cahiers critiques de thérapie familiale et de pratiques de réseaux, 42(1), 87-105.
- Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. (2003). The Attachment Behavioral System In Adulthood: Activation, Psychodynamics, And Interpersonal Processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 35(1), 53-152.