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This study examined the role of parental adult attachment and couples' prenatal and postnatal marital interactions in predicting the quality of family interactions 24 months after the birth of the couple's first child. Father's prenatal marital withdrawal and mother's postnatal marital withdrawal were associated with less adaptive family interactions at 24 months. Families with fathers who had an insecure attachment, as assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview, showed less positive and more negative interactions at 24 months, but only when there were higher levels of negative escalation in the couple's marriage prenatally. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of exploring the transition to parenthood at the broader family level.

In a sample of 138 couples, the present study examined whether individuals' marital functioning related to both their own and their partner's attachment stance. Earned-secure wives managed their affect as well as continuous-secure wives during problem-solving discussions and better than preoccupied or dismissing wives. However, preoccupied and dismissing wives did not exhibit markedly different patterns of affect regulation in their marriages. Regarding individuals' marital functioning and partners' attachment stance, neither husbands' behavior nor perceptions related to their wives' attachment stance. However, wives of continuous-secure husbands exhibited more positive marital behavior than wives of dismissing and earned-secure husbands. Findings are discussed in terms of how attachment working models may account for both continuities and discontinuities between earlier caregiving experiences and functioning in adult relationships.

The authors tested a cognitive-interpersonal hypothesis of depression by examining the role of interpersonal cognitions in the prediction of depression associated with interpersonal stressors. A measure of adult attachment assessed interpersonal cognitions about ability to be close to others and to depend on others and anxiety about rejection and abandonment. Participants were women who had recently graduated from high school; they were followed for 1 year with extensive interview evaluation of life events, depression, and other symptomatology. Generally, cognitions, interpersonal events, and their interactions contributed to the prediction of interview-assessed depressive symptoms, but the effects were not specific to depression and predicted general symptomatology measured by diagnostic interviews as well, and results also varied by attachment subscale. Results were discussed in terms of a developmental psychopathology approach to disorders in young women.