The relationships between mother-child attachment and emotional availability: A dyadic analysis

The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between mothers' own attachment styles and their children's attachment styles, mothers' emotional availability and their children's emotional availability, mother attachment and mother emotional availability and child emotional availability, child attachment and mother emotional availability and child emotional availability with a dyadic approach. Therefore, a dyadic analysis has been conducted with volunteers consisting of both mothers and their male/female children who were above age 18. Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment – Turkish version (IPPA-T) and Lum Emotional Availability of Parents (LEAP) were utilized to collect data. In order to test the main hypotheses of the research Path Analysis Structural Equation Model was conducted. The findings confirmed the hypotheses by revealing that there are positive relationships between mothers' attachment styles and children's attachment styles, mother's emotional availability and children's emotional availability, and mother-child attachment style with emotional availability. The results were discussed in terms of the scope of the literature and suggestions for research and practice were presented for researchers and mental health practitioners in the field.