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Marital conflict and the

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Journal of Family Psychology Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1997, Vol. 11, No. 2, 152-164 0893-3200/97/$3.00

Marital Conflict and the Development of Infant-Parent

Attachment Relationships

Margaret Tresch Owen Martha J. Cox

University of Texas at Dallas and Timberlawn University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research Foundation

Couples were studied before and after the birth of their 1st child to understand
processes by which marital conflict influences child development. Hypotheses were
tested concerning direct and indirect processes relating marital conflict to the security
of infant-mother and infant-father attachment and disorganized attachment behavior.
Findings supported the prediction that chronic marital conflict interferes with sensitive,
involved parenting and thereby predicts insecurity in attachment relationships, partic-
ularly for fathers. It was also argued that chronic marital conflict presents the infant
with experiences of frightened or frightening parents and diminished behavioral
options to alleviate accompanying distress. As predicted, disorganized attachment
behavior with mother and father was explained by chronic marital conflict and not
mediated by parental ego development or sensitive parenting.

Marital conflict has been identified as a risk
factor that increases the probability of many
adjustment problems in children, including both
externalizing disorders, such as noncompliance
and aggression, and internalizing disorders
(Emery, 1982; Holden & Ritchie, 1991;
Jouriles, Pfifmer, & O'Leary, 1988; Margolin,
1981; Markman & Leonard, 1985; Rutter,
1994). These studies have clearly established
the link between marital conflict and child dis-
order; however, little has been done to illumi-
nate the mechanisms by which marital discord
influences children. In addition, most of the
research has been done with older children;
there has been little consideration of the impact
of marital conflict on infants. In the research
reported here, we examined two probable pro-
cesses in a study of the linkages between marital
conflict and infant-parent attachment. We
tested the hypothesis that marital conflict is
associated with insecure infant-parent attach-
ment as a result of its association with less
sensitive, active, and accepting parenting (see
Crockenberg & Covey, 1991), and we also ex-
amined direct effects of marital conflict on dis-
organization in attachment behaviors. We stud-
ied these linkages both for infant-mother
attachment and for infant-father attachment.

Margaret Tresch Owen, School of Human Devel-

opment, University of Texas at Dallas, and Timber-
lawn Research Foundation, Dallas, Texas; Martha J.
Cox, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Cen-
ter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The research reported here was supported in part
by grants from the Hogg Foundation of Austin, Tex-
as; the Meadows Foundation of Dallas, Texas; and
Mervyn's Department Stores. We gratefully ac-
knowledge the significant contributions of Jerry M.
Lewis, John T. Gossett, V. Kay Henderson, Virginia
Austin Phillips, Ann M. Minnett, and Sarah Henry.
Correspondence concerning this article should be
addressed to Margaret Tresch Owen, School of Hu-
man Development, University of Texas at Dallas,
P.O. Box 830688, GR41, Richardson, Texas 75083-
0688. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet to
mowen@utdallas.edu.
Marital Conflict and Attachment
Much of the research on marital conflict and
child development has focused on children at
late preschool and elementary school ages.
There is little information concerning the early
months of a child's life and the extent to which
marital conflict affects infant-parent relation-
ships. Of particular interest is the association
between marital conflict and infant-parent at-
tachment relationships. Attachment relation-
ships may be an important link to later adjust-
ment problems that have been related to marital
conflict in the home. Infant-parent attachment
is one of the earliest manifestations of the
child's emotional adjustment. As Cummings

152
 MARITAL CONFLICT AND ATTACHMENT
and Davies (1994) have noted, emotional func-
tioning is an obvious key to understanding the
development of children's adjustment problems
associated with marital conflict
Two studies suggest a link between marital
quality and infant-mother attachment. Howes
and Markman (1989), relying on the Waters and
Deane (1985) Attachment Q-Set to measure at-
tachment, found that parental reports of high
marital satisfaction, low conflict, and high com-
munication quality were related to 1-3-year-old
children's observed security of attachment and
dependency with their mother. Isabella and Bel-
sky (1985), in a study examining both infant-
mother and infant-father attachment, as mea-
sured by the "strange situation," found that
parent reports of deterioration in marital adjust-
ment were linked to insecure infant-mother at-
tachment but not infant-father attachment.
Howes and Markman (1989) used a secure-
to-insecure continuum of attachment obtained
by correlating the Q-sort description of the child
with an "ideally secure" Q-sort description. Isa-
bella and Belsky (1985) used the three classifi-
cations of overall patterns of attachment orga-
nization (secure, insecure-avoidant, and
insecure-resistant). Neither study used the de-
scriptive category of disorganized behavior pat-
terns described by Main and Solomon (1990)
for infants who appeared to lack a coherent
attachment strategy or a behavior pattern readily
classifiable as secure, avoidant, or resistant. The
infants described by Main and Solomon showed
bouts of behavior "which seemed to lack a
readily observable goal, intention, or explana-
tion" (1990, p. 122). Addressing the prevalence
of such disorganized-disoriented attachment
behavior in studies of marital conflict and emo-
tional functioning in young children may be
important, given that this type of behavior is a
particularly potent predictor of later behavior
problems in children (Lyons^Ruth, Alpern, &
Repacholi, 1993).
Two hypotheses that address how marital dis-
cord affects children were examined in the
present study of marital conflict and infant-
parent attachment. The first considers marital
conflict's effect on children via its impact on
parent-child interaction (see Crockenberg &
Covey, 1991). The second postulates that mar-
ital conflict is a potent direct cause of children's
adjustment problems by means of its effects on
children's regulation of emotional arousal and
organization (see Davies & Cummings, 1994).
153
Relations Between Marital Conflict and
Attachment via Parenting
Studies of parents and older preschool chil-
dren suggest that marital discord may disrupt,
particularly for fathers, the very dimensions of
parenting that have been implicated in the de-
velopment of secure infant-parent attachment,
namely, sensitivity, warmth, acceptance, and
responsiveness (e.g., Ainsworth, Blehar, Wa-
ters, & Wall, 1978; Belsky, Rovine, & Taylor,
1984; Cox, Owen, Henderson, & Margand,
1992; Maslin & Bates, 1983; Miyake, Chen, &
Campos, 1985). Several researchers who have
addressed effects of the marriage on both
husbands* and wives* parenting have found
evidence of a greater impact of marriage on
fathers' parenting than on mothers' (e.g., Gold-
berg & Easterbrooks, 1984; Parke & Tinsley,
1981).
Direct Relations
Arguments for direct effects of marital con-
flict on children were outlined in a recent re-
view by Davies and Cummings (1994). They
suggested that exposure to angry, discordant
marital interactions affects the organization of
young children's emotional response to stress-
ful situations. In agreement with Davies and
Cummings, we propose that chronic exposure to
strong marital conflict is frightening to young
children. We speculate that the infant, when
exposed to marital conflict, does not have good
behavioral options to decrease the resulting
emotional arousal in such situations. For this
reason, we propose that marital discord may be
directly related to disorganized, disoriented be-
havior in the child with the parent in stressful
situations, as described by Main and Solomon
(1990). On the basis of two sets of findings
Unking, first, maternal maltreatment of the child
and, second, maternal experience of unresolved
loss with disorganized-disoriented infant at-
tachment behavior, Main and Hesse (1990) pro-
posed that such attachment behavior may result
from the infant's exposure to frightened or
frightening parental behavior. They suggested
that, faced with a frightened or frightening par-
ent, the infant experiences a highly arousing but
extremely difficult-to-resolve situation. In their
words,
154 OWEN AND COX
since the attachment figure is normaUy the "so-
lution" provided to the infant for dealing with
stressful or alarming experiences, an infant who
is frightened by the attachment figure is pre-
sented with a paradoxical problemnamely, an
attachment figure who is at once the source of
and the solution to its alarm. (Main & Hesse,
1990, p. 163)
The result, they proposed, is the inability to
develop an organized pattern of attachment be-
havior adaptive to the parent's behavior. Anal-
ogously, we hypothesize that chronic exposure
to strong marital conflict presents a similarly
frightening experience for the young child, who
cannot easily approach the parent for reassur-
ance in such circumstances. We expected that
these experiences would affect the organization
of the child's emotional response to stress and
hence lead to a direct association between mar-
ital conflict and increased incidence of specifi-
cally disorganized attachment.
The Current Study
In the current study, we proposed and tested
hypotheses relating marital conflict to attach-
ment security via effects on parenting and
relating marital conflict directly to disorganiza-
tion of attachment. In our measurement of mar-
ital conflict, we observed couples in a problem-
solving task to assess the amount of conflict and
negative affect couples show and their ability to
resolve conflict. We suggest that observation of
couples, rather than self-report, is crucial to
assess not only how much conflict or negative
affect couples show but also their ability to
resolve conflict. The relative negativity of chil-
dren's responses to marital conflict has been
closely linked to the degree to which the con-
flict is unresolved (Cummings, Ballard, El-
Sheikh, & Lake, 1991).
Marital problem-solving interactions were
observed both before and after the birth of the
first child in this longitudinal study of family
development. The transition to parenthood is a
time that requires considerable adaptation of
marital partners; marriages tend to become in-
creasingly discordant. In the present study, we
aggregated the assessments of marital conflict
from the pregnancy period and when the infant
was 3 months old to provide a more stable
estimate of the couples' conflict than a single
measurement and to capture variability in cou-
ples over this period of time, when some show
stable functioning but others change in less
adaptive directions (Belsky, Spanier, & Rovine,
1983; Cowan et al., 1985; Gottman & Krokoff,
1989; Owen, 1992). Our desire was to represent
the nature of the infant's exposure to interpa-
rental conflict across the early months when
early organizational capacities are being
established.
In addressing the relations between marital
conflict and infant-parent attachment, we con-
trolled for mothers' and fathers' psychological
maturity, as assessed before the birth of the
child. We, and others, have noted that the link
between marital conflict and child disorder
could be caused by the association of both of
these factors with the parents' social-emotional
adjustment or maturity (e.g., Cox, Owen, Hen-
derson, & Lewis, 1989). Ego development, one
particular aspect of social-emotional maturity,
has been related to qualities in interpersonal
relations such as nurturance, psychological-
mindedness, and responsibility (Hauser, 1978,
1993; Helson & Wink, 1987; Westenburg &
Block, 1993). Moreover, a related construct,
psychological integration, has been found to
predict secure attachment (Benn, 1986). We
therefore controlled for variation due to parental
social-emotional maturity, as indexed by ego
development, in examining the prediction of
attachment security and of disorganized attach-
ment behavior from marital conflict.
Parenting was assessed through both observa-
tion of parent-infant interactions and parental
self-reports in interviews. Assessing both ob-
servable behavior and reports about parenting
provided multiple sources of information and a
more generalizable assessment of parenting
qualities. As Gottman (1990) noted, "we must
integrate thought and behavior in any complete
model of relationships" (p. 256).
In sum, we addressed the following ques-
tions: (a) Does marital conflict predict security
of infant-father or infant-mother attachment?
(b) If so, is the effect mediated by less sensitive,
warm, and active parenting and by parents* re-
ports of less involvement with, delight in, and
acceptance of the child? (c) Do these effects
hold when effects due to the parents' social-
emotional maturity are taken into account? and
(d) Does more negative and unresolvable mar-
ital conflict relate to more disorganized, disori-
ented infant attachment behaviors, unmediated
by parenting qualities?
 MARITAL CONFLICT AND ATTACHMENT
Method
Participants
The participants were 38 married couples and the
15 female and 23 male infants subsequently born to
them. Couples who were expecting their first child
were recruited from among the patients of several
obstetrical practices at a large medical center in Dal-
las, Texas; 74% of those contacted agreed to partic-
ipate, resulting in an initial sample of 40 couples.
Two couples dropped out from the study after the
initial interviews; also eliminated from analyses were
5 father-child dyads for whom data were incomplete.
Thus, the analyses are reported for 38 infant-mother
dyads and 33 infant-father dyads.
The couples' mean length of marriage at enlist-
ment was 3.5 years. The mean age for husbands was
29.4 years, and the mean age for wives was 27.3
years. The mean yearly family income was between
$35,000 and $39,000. Husbands had an average of
15.8 years of education, and wives had an average of
15.5 years. Couples' scores on Holling&head's (1975)
social class index ranged from 32 to 66 (M = 52.4).
All couples were Caucasian.
Procedure
The data we report here (drawn from an extensive
longitudinal study) were gathered prenatally and
when the child was 3 months and 1 year of age.
Prenatal assessment The first visit with each
couple, conducted in the family home during the
second trimester of the wife's pregnancy, involved
interviews with each spouse. Approximately 1 week
later, the couple was interviewed together in the
laboratory and then asked to engage in a series of
four standard discussion tasks that included attempts
to solve a problem, resolve disagreements, and plan a
joint activity. Specifically, the couple was asked to
discuss "what have been the most pleasurable aspects
of your marriage and what have been the most pain-
ful aspects of your marriage" and "what is the great-
est source of disagreement in your marriage; see if
you can make any progress towards resolving that
disagreement in the next 8 minutes." In addition,
couples were asked to discuss whose family they
would choose to live with if their economic situation
became so bad as to require living with one of their
families. Finally, they were asked to plan an activity
they might do together. The couple was left alone in
a room for these interactions; the interactions were
videotaped from a fixed camera behind a one-way
mirror. The couples knew they were being video-
taped and that observers were not present behind the
mirror.
Three-month assessment. Three months after the
child's birth, the parents were interviewed individu-
155
ally during a laboratory visit and were asked about
their feelings about the infant and their parenting
role, as well as their perceptions of the child's devel-
opment; many of these questions were drawn from
the interview schedule used by Hock, Christmas, and
Hock (1980). A series of videotaped marital discus-
sion tasks similar to those used at the prenatal assess-
ment followed the interview. Discussion topics at this
time included "the best and the worst aspects of being
a parent," "the positive and negative changes that
have occurred in your marital relationship since the
birth of your child," and "the things that you think
married couples should know before having their first
child." About a week later, each parent was video-
taped at home in a 15-min semistructured interaction
with his or her infant; the camera was fixed, and the
pair was left alone, with instructions given to the
parent that he or she stay in camera range and "do
whatever you would normally do with your infant if
you had some free time at this time of day." The
order of mother-infant and father-infant observa-
tions was counterbalanced.
One-year assessment. When the infant reached
12-15 months of age, infant-father attachment and
infant-mother attachment were assessed through
Ainsworth's strange situation procedure (Ainsworth
et aL, 1978). Order of infant-mother and infant-
father strange situation procedures was counterbal-
anced, and the two assessments were separated by a
period of 7-10 weeks.
Measures
Marital conflict (prenatal and at 3 months). The
videotaped marital interactions were rated via the
Beavers-Timberlawn Family Evaluation Scale
(Lewis, Beavers, Gossett, & Phillips, 1976) applied
to marital interactions (see Lewis, 1989). Five of the
subscales were selected as relevant indexes of marital
conflict. The five subscales were designed to capture
amount of marital conflict, efficiency in negotiating
problem solutions, affect during problem negotiation,
distribution of power in problem negotiation (from
more to less egalitarian), and ability of the marital
partners to take responsibility for their own behavior
during problem negotiation.
The coding was completed independently by two
trained clinicians at the prenatal and 3-month assess-
ments; a third trained clinician independently coded
39 of the prenatal and 10 of the 3-month assessment
tapes.
The five ratings were subjected to a principal-
components analysis. At each time period, all five
scales loaded similarly on one factor. Consequently,
the five ratings were standardized and combined into
a single variable at each period to index marital
conflict. The direction of the contributing scales was
such that a higher score represented less marital
156 OWEN AND COX
conflict, better and more egalitarian problem solving
and conflict negotiation, talcing responsibility for be-
havior, and less negative affect. Interrater reliabilities
(rs) of the composite formed by the sum of the scales
(each scale ranged from less well functioning to
better functioning) were .80 for the prenatal assess-
ment and .85 for the 3-month assessment. The pre-
natal and 3-month marital conflict composites corre-
lated .56 (p < .001), supporting earlier work
suggesting moderately strong stability in couples'
relationships over time, even across the transition to
parenthood (Belsky et al.. 1983; Cowan et ah, 1985).
The two composites were subsequently summed to
form an over-time composite on the assumption that
evidence from two time periods should capture the
couples' marital conflict with less error than would
measurement at a single time period (Rushton, Brain-
erd, & Pressley, 1983).
Parents' psychological maturity (prenatalperiod).
At the first home visit, parents completed the Wash-
ington Sentence Completion Test, which measures
ego development (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970;
Loevinger, Wessler, & Redmore, 1970). The reliabil-
ity and validity of the Washington Sentence Comple-
tion Test have been well established (e.g., Helson &
Wink, 1987). For example, ego resiliency and
interpersonal integrity relate to increases in ego de-
velopment from adolescence to young adulthood
(Westenburg & Block, 1993), and women's ego de-
velopment relates to parent-child turn taking and
reciprocal enabling (Hauser, Houlihan, Powers, &
Jacobson, 1991) and to relationship maturity in mar-
ried couples (White, Houlihan, Costos, & Speisman,
1990). Scoring was done by two trained independent
raters. Their interrater reliability correlation was .80.
A higher score on the ego development measure is
indicative of more mature psychological functioning.
Parental behavior. The mother-child and father-
child interactions, observed at 3 months, were rated
from videotape via global scales adapted from
Ainsworth (No date) and Egeland and Farber (1984).
Two of the scales (positiveness of affect and anima-
tion) were constructed for this study. The interactions
were rated independently by two trained raters un-
aware of other information about the family. Ratings
were made on variables chosen to broadly represent
the interaction, including (a) the parent's sensitivity,
which involves the extent to which the parent-infant
interaction is characterized by prompt and appropri-
ate responses to the baby's signals (1 = highly in-
sensitive, 9 = highly sensitive); (b) positiveness of
parental affect (1 = very negative, 5 = very positive);
(c) the parent's affective animation (1 = flat, blank
expressionless face and voice, 5 = very animated
with appropriately expressive face and voice and
sparkling eyes); (d) the amount of reciprocal play,
which reflects the quantity of time in which infant
and parent share mutual attention to a toy or game (in
which both are taking an active part and there is some
contingent alternation of response; (1 = none, 9 =
nearly constant reciprocal play); (e) the parent's
attitude toward play, which reflects the parent's en-
joyment of playing with the baby (1 = strong, active
dislike, 9 = much active enjoyment); (f) the parent's
activity level, which reflects the amount of parental
physical or verbal activity in the play situation (1 =
distant, 9 = extremely high); and (g) the parent's
encouragement of achievement, which reflects the
extent to which the parent stimulates the infant to-
ward development, whether through play or through
obvious training (1 = highly inappropriate encour-
agement, 9 = moderately appropriate encourage-
ment). A count of the number of 15-s intervals in
which the parent vocalized to the child was also
obtained. One fourth of the videotapes were coded by
two raters; interrater agreement (Pearson rs) ranged
from .88 to 1.00 for the global ratings, and agreement
on vocalizing to the baby occurred 94% of the time.
As described in Cox et al. (1992), the eight inter-
action variable's were subjected to a principal-
components factor analysis with varimax rotation to
determine how many independent descriptors of in-
teraction they represented. The eight variables all
loaded on one factor. This factor represented warm,
sensitive, active interactions between parent and in-
fant that broadly included not only sensitivity and
warmth but also level of activity and stimulation of
the infant. The eight variables were standardized and
then combined.
Parental cognitions. Global ratings were made
independently by trained raters from transcripts of
the interviews conducted at the 3-month assessment
with each parent and with the couple. The parenting
sections of the interviews were given to raters un-
aware of other data. Husbands and wives were rated
by different raters. The parenting variables were cho-
sen to reflect attitudes and reports about the infant
and the parenting role. The following variables were
rated: (a) the parent's delight in the baby, involving
the extent to which the parent expresses pleasure in
the baby, as distinguished from a pride in parenthood
that has little to do with qualities of the baby (1 =
delight is absent, 9 markedly frequent delight); (b)
the parent's acceptance of the baby, involving the
degree of acceptance versus rejection of the baby as
a result of the baby's interference with the parent's
own autonomy (1 = highly rejecting, 9 complete
acceptance); (c) sensitivity to the baby's communi-
cations, as reflected in the degree of awareness, free-
dom from distortion, and empathy in the parents'
reports of their interactions with their children (1 -
highly insensitive, 9 = highly sensitive); and (d)
investment in parenting, reflecting the extent to
which the parent values parenting over other adult
roles, sees himself or herself to be important in the
infant's development, and views spending time with
the baby as a priority (1 = highly invested, 5 = very
uninvested). The ratings of delight, acceptance, and
 MARITAL CONFLICT AND ATTACHMENT
sensitivity were adapted from Ainsworth's (No date)
rating scales of parental behavior. The investment
rating scale was constructed for this study. Interrater
reliabilities (Pearson rs) ranged from .80 to .89. As
described in Cox et al. (1992), these four ratings
(delight, investment, sensitivity, and acceptance)
were highly intercorrelated; as a result, they were
combined via standard scores. This composite vari-
able represents the parent's attitudes about the infant
and the parenting role.
Infant-parent attachment. Infant behavior with
each parent in the strange situation was classified by
two trained raters, according to the protocol outlined
in Ainsworth et al. (1978), as falling into one of the
subcategories of the three major attachment patterns:
insecure-avoidant (A), secure (B), or insecure-
resistant (C). In addition, disorganized-disoriented
(D) behavior was scored according to descriptions by
Main and Solomon (1986). Twenty-three percent of
the tapes (some randomly chosen and some deemed
"difficult" by one of the raters) were coded indepen-
dently by both raters. Agreement on the major clas-
sifications occurred in 88% of the cases. Disagree-
ments were resolved by reviewing the videotapes
with a third trained coder and reaching consensus.
As presented in Cox et al. (1992), a 4-point con-
tinuum of attachment security similar to that used by
Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) was derived from
the subclassiftcauons. We developed this index of
attachment security to overcome the loss of variation
that occurs in analyses based on a dichotomous
secureinsecure designation (i.e., secure vs. not se-
cure), a concern also expressed by Cummings (1990).
Cummings argued that using the secure-insecure
designation leads to a major loss of power that can be
avoided with an attachment continuum that retains
distinctions within secure and insecure groups.
In this continuum, the B 3 classification (represent-
ing behavior patterns involving active proximity-
seeking of the parent and considered by Ainsworth as
most normative of 1-year-old middle-class American
infants) was assigned a 4 (most secure). B l 5 B 2 , and
B 4 (secure behavior patterns containing either less
[B x, B2] or more [B4] proximity-seeking of the parent
than B 3 patterns) were assigned a 3, unless the
strange situation interactive rating scales indicated
concurrent signs of insecurity as well (i.e., moder-
ately high avoidance, resistance, or disorganization
scores), in which case these classifications were as-
signed a 2. Likewise, for the A and C classifications,
if the strange situation interactive scales had indi-
cated presence of concurrent signs of security, a 2
was assigned. A 1 was assigned to all other insecure
classifications (A, C, or D).
Infant-mother and infant-father attachment scores
were somewhat similarly distributed on this contin-
uum. For infant-mother attachment, the distribution
was as follows: (a) Cs, As, or Ds (least secure), 32%;
(b) BjS, B2s, and B4s with concurrent signs of inse-
157
curity or As and Cs with concurrent signs of security,
14%; (c) other BiS, B 2 s, or B 4 s, 30%; and (d) B3s
(most secure), 24%. For infant-father attachment, the
distribution was as follows: (a) Cs, As, or Ds, 21%;
(b) B,s, B2s, and B4s with concurrent signs of inse-
curity or As and Cs with concurrent signs of security,
32%; (c) other B ^ , B 2 s, or B 4 s, 26%; and (d) B 3 s,
21%.
A slightly higher percentage of infant-mother
(54%) as opposed to infant-father (47%) dyads were
rated as clearly secure (B x , B 2 , B 3 , or B 4 ; 3 or 4 on
the continuum). Surprisingly, fewer infant-father dy-
ads (21%) than infant-mother dyads (32%) were
rated as clearly insecure (A, C, or D; 1 on the con-
tinuum). The reason was that a larger percentage of
infant-father dyads (32%) than infant-mother dyads
(14%) were initially seen as having elements of both
insecurity and security. This sample was very similar
to other samples in overall proportions of secure-
insecure classifications for both infant-mother and
infant-father dyads. In the final determination, 62%
of infant-mother and infant-father dyads were
judged to be secure.
A 9-point scale depicting level of disorganized
infant behavior in the strange situation was scored
according to descriptions provided by Main and So-
lomon, 1986. In the Ainsworth strange situation,
infants are judged to fit to the D (hereafter, disorga-
nized) category when they show strong or combined
indices of disorganization or disorientation in the pres-
ence of the parent such as freezing of all movement;
approaching the parent with head averted; rocking on
hands and knees following an abortive approach; mov-
ing away from the parent to the wall when apparently
frightened by the stranger; screaming for the parent by
the door upon separation, then moving silently away
upon reunion; orrisingto greet the parent on reunion,
and then falling prone to the floor. (Main & Hesse,
1990)
Interrater reliability (Pearson r) for the 9-point Dis-
organization scale was assessed on 22% of the cases;
the reliability estimate was .91.
The infants' mean disorganized behavior score in
the strange situation with mother was 4.24 (SD
2.69); the mean score in the strange situation with
father was 2.58 (SD = 2.33). Scores with mother and
with father both ranged from 1 to 9.
Results
Table 1 contains the simple correlations
among all measures used in the analyses for
mothers and for fathers, as well as the correla-
tions between mothers' and fathers' like mea-
sures. Note that, among the predictors for moth-
ers, marital conflict was negatively correlated
with both sensitive interaction and positive pa-
renting attitudes. Security of infant-mother at-
158 OWEN AND COX
Table 1
Correlations of All Measures
Measure 1 2
1. Ego development 43*** -.22
2. Marital conflict _ 4i**
3. Warm, sensitive, active
interaction .27 4j**
4. Attitude toward infant
and parent role 49*** .31**
5. Security of infant-parent
attachment .09 -.27
6. Disorganization scale .13 .40** -.29
Note. Correlations among father measures are shown above the diagonal; correlations among mother
measures are shown below the diagonal. The correlations along the diagonal are between mothers' and fathers'
like measures.
*p<A0. **p < .05. ***/> < .01.
tachment was significantly correlated only with
positive interaction qualities. Disorganized at-
tachment behavior with mother was correlated
only with marital conflict. Among the predictor
variables for attachment with father, marital
conflict was negatively correlated with positive
interactive qualities and attitudes. Security of
infant-father attachment was negatively corre-
lated with marital conflict and positively corre-
lated with parenting behavior and attitudes. Dis-
organized attachment behavior with father was
significantly correlated only with marital con-
flict. For both mothers and fathers, disorganiza-
tion scores and security of attachment scores
were negatively correlated. Note that the
bivariate correlations between mothers' and fa-
thers' ego development and between their sen-
sitive interaction with their infants were signif-
icant; however, the security of infant-mother
and infant-father attachment was only margin-
ally related, and disorganization scores with
each parent were not related.
Hierarchical multiple regression analyses
were used to test for the effects of marital con-
flict on the security of the infant-parent attach-
ment relationship and on the infant's level of
disorganized attachment behavior. Separate
analyses were performed for mothers and fa-
thers and for the prediction of security of at-
tachment and of disorganized attachment be-
havior. The results of these four regression
analyses are shown in Table 2.
The question of interest was whether marital
conflict would account for significant variation
in secure attachment and amount of disorgani-
zation over and above that predicted by parental
psychological maturity. Marital conflict was
3 4 5 6
.35** .24 .17 -.01
-.41** -.36** .57*** 45***
47*** .48*** 43*** -.17
46*** .22 53*** -.24
.32** .17 .32* -.50**
-.17 -.66*** .28
added to the equations after parental ego devel-
opment had first been entered as a covariate. As
shown in Table 2, marital conflict significantly
predicted disorganization in both infant-mother
and infant-father attachments, as well as the
security of infant-father attachment. Marital
conflict did not significantly predict the security
of infant-mother attachment. When couples
were judged to have more chronic conflict
across the prenatal period and the 3-month post-
natal period (with parental ego development
controlled), infant-mother attachment was
judged to be more disorganized, and infant-
father attachment was judged as less secure and
more disorganized. The ego development co-
variate was nonsignificant.
As a result of the small sample size, the
potential for differences in the relations between
marital conflict and attachment relationships for
male and female infants could not be tested.
However, there were no differences by infant
gender in couples' marital conflict, attachment
security, or disorganization scores.
Next, we tested whether the impact of marital
conflict on attachment relationships was medi-
ated by the quality of observed parenting and
reported parenting attitudes at 3 months. Thus,
for the three outcomes in which marital conflict
negotiation skill was a significant predictor
(infant-mother disorganization score, infant-
father security of attachment continuum, and
infant-father disorganization score), we per-
formed hierarchical multiple regression analy-
ses in which parental adjustment was again en-
tered first as a control, followed by a set of
parenting variables (observed warm, sensitive
interaction and parental attitudes toward the
 MARITAL CONFLICT AND ATTACHMENT 159

Table 2
Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses: Prediction of Infant-Parent
Security of Attachment and Infant-Parent Disorganization Score
Independent variable df
Infant-mother security continuum
Ego development .008 .008 0.29 1,35
Marital conflict .07 .062 2.26 1,34
Infant-mother disorganization score
Ego development .02 .02 0.59 1,35
Marital conflict .21 .19 8.08*** 1,34
Infant-father security continuum
Ego development .03 .03 0.91 1,32
Marital conflict .33 .30 10.54*** 1,31
Infant-father disorganization score
Ego development .00 .00 0.01 1, 32
Marital conflict .21 .21 8.24*** 1, 31
Note. I = increase in rt2; F} = significance of increase in R2.
***p < .01.

child and parental role) and the marital conflict
variable. These hierarchical regressions were
used to test whether the prediction of attach-
ment from marital conflict was mediated by
parental behavior, attitudes, and parental psy-
chological maturity or whether marital conflict
remained a significant predictor after control for
these factors. The results are shown in Table 3.
The parenting variables did add to the predic-
tion of the infant-mother disorganization score
and the infant-father security of attachment
continuum. However, in both cases, marital
conflict remained a significant predictor after
variance related to the parenting variables and
ego development had been controlled. In pre-
dicting infant-father disorganization behavior,
the parenting variables did not explain addi-
tional significant variation and did not improve
the prediction above the model with fathers' ego
development and marital conflict as predictors.
It appears that the effect of marital conflict on
infant-father security of attachment and on dis-
organized behavior in the infant-mother and
infant-father attachment relationships cannot be
explained by positing a mediational effect of
parenting.
Discussion
The most striking finding in this study was
the evidence for greater disorganized attach-
ment behavior with mother as well as with
father when marital conflict was judged as
higher. The prediction of attachment disorgani-
zation from marital conflict was independent of
both the level of the parents' ego development
and the characteristics of parenting behavior
and attitudes studied here. Positive characteris-
tics of mothers' and fathers' parenting of their
3-month-old infants were correlated with the
infant's security of attachment with each re-
spective parent but not with disorganization in
the attachment relationships.
If, as we suggest, frequent and unresolved
marital conflict exposes the child to frightened
or frightening parents who are unavailable or
unapproachable as a source of comfort, then the
present findings lend support to Main and
Hesse's (1990) hypothesis regarding the origins
of disorganized attachment. We suggest that,
during marital conflict, infants can be exposed
to parents' frightening or frightened behavior.
The result, we argue, presents infants with the
paradoxical problem of an attachment figure or
figures who are both the source and solution to
their alarm. Through this mechanism, marital
conflict may be detrimental to the child's de-
velopment of emotional regulation.
We did not directly study the degree to which
infants were exposed to the parents' marital
conflict. However, we think it likely that parents
are less prone to shield their infant from expo-
sure to their arguments and conflict than they
are their older children under the assumption
that the young infant is too immature to com-
160 OWEN AND COX

Table 3
Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses: Prediction of Infant-Mother
Disorganization Score, Infant-Father Security of Attachment, and
Infant-Father Disorganization Score
Independent variable set df
Infant-mother disorganization score
Mother's ego development .02 .02 0.59 1,35
Mother's warm, sensitive, active interactions
and attitude toward infant and role .14 .12 4.71** 2,33
Marital conflict .27 .13 5.49** 1,32
Infant-father security continuum
Father's ego development .03 .03 0.91 1,32
Father's warm, sensitive, active interactions
and attitude toward infant and role .33 .30 13.20*** 2, 30
Marital conflict .49 .19 9.38*** 1,29
Infant-father disorganization score
Father's ego development .00 .00 0.01 1,32
Father's warm, sensitive, active interactions
and attitude toward infant and role .06 .06 1.91 2, 30
Marital conflict .22 .16 5.95** 1,2
Note. I = increase in R2; Fr significance of increase in R2.
**p < .05. ***/? < .01.

prehend or be affected by such experiences. It
should be noted that the infants in our study
were all firstborn children, and thus older chil-
dren were not present in these households.
The findings evoke questions that cannot be
directly addressed by this study. For example, to
what extent do infants vicariously respond to
negative affect of their caregivers such as may
be present under conditions of marital conflict?
Do the negative emotions of others evoke dis-
tress in the infants, as we suggest? Simner
(1971) and Sagi and Hoffman (1976) found that
infants as young as 1 day old cry in response to
the crying of other infants. The nature of the
responsive crying was indistinguishable from
an infant's spontaneous crying, leading the au-
thors to suggest that infants respond to a cue of
distress in others by experiencing distress them-
selves. Such evidence of the responsiveness to
others* distress in young infants is consistent
with the hypothesized linkages between marital
conflict and disorganized attachment behaviors
supported in the present study.
Other studies linking marital distress and as-
pects of child functioning support the thesis that
marital conflict may be an important factor in
the development of children's emotional regu-
lation. Among 4- and 5-year-old children, Gott-
man and Katz (1989) found evidence for a path
from marital distress to high levels of chronic
stress (as indexed by a high level of urinary
catacholamines) and difficulties in emotional
regulation in peer interaction. The findings of
Cummings and his colleagues (summarized in
Cummings, Cummings, & El-Sheikh, 1989, and
Davies & Cummings, 1994) similarly reflect
that exposure to angry, discordant marital inter-
actions affects the organization of young chil-
dren's emotional responses.
Disorganization of attachment has been found
to occur with great frequency in conditions of
extreme family risk (Carlson, Cicchetti, Barnett,
& Braunwald, 1989; Lyons-Ruth, Connell,
Grunebaum, & Botein, 1990). Evidence from
the present, primarily middle-class sample, not
selected for risk, indicates that chronic marital
conflict should be added to the conditions of
family risk implicated in the development of
disorganization of attachment. Understanding
the origins of disorganization in attachment is
given particular importance from findings such
as those of Lyons-Ruth and her colleagues in
which disorganization in attachment was found
to be the single most important predictor of later
hostile, aggressive behavior in children (Lyons-
Ruth et al., 1993). Disorganization of attach-
ment may mark future problems for the child in
emotional regulation.
We also found support for the hypothesized
relation between marital conflict and the secu-
 MARITAL CONFLICT AND ATTACHMENT
rity of infant-parent attachment, especially for
the relationship with father. Findings supported
the prediction that chronic marital conflict in-
terferes with sensitive, involved parenting and
thereby predicts insecurity in the infant-father
attachment relationship. This pathway was not
similarly supported for the security of attach-
ment to mother. These findings are consistent
with others with older preschool children indi-
cating that marital discord may be particularly
disruptive to the sensitivity, warmth, and in-
volvement of fathers with their children. On the
other hand, several studies have shown simi-
larly disruptive effects on mothers' parenting
under certain conditions. The inconsistency of
findings concerning the relation of marital dis-
cord to mothers' parenting has led to the spec-
ulation that a variety of processes probably op-
erate in families. For example, effects of marital
conflict on parenting may alternatively include
compensatory coalitions between parent and
child, insensitive intrusiveness, hostility and re-
jection, or withdrawal from the child and pa-
renting role (e.g., Belsky, Youngblade, Rovine,
& Volling, 1991).
Although the primary focus of the present
study was on the direct and indirect linkages
between marital conflict and attachment, notice
should be given to the relations shown between
parenting, as measured here, and attachment. As
theoretically predicted and found in other stud-
ies, including a previous report on this sample
(Cox et al., 1992), sensitive parenting was cor-
related with both infant-mother and infant-
father security of attachment. In contrast, there
has been scant empirical research on the inter-
actional etiology of disorganized attachment be-
havior. Given current theoretical understanding
of the etiology of disorganized attachment be-
havior, no hypotheses were formulated regard-
ing prediction of disorganized attachment from
sensitive, involved parenting. In the present
study, sensitive parenting was predictive of dis-
organized behavior in the infant-mother attach-
ment relationship after maternal ego develop-
ment had been controlled. Neither this finding
nor the lack of prediction of disorganized be-
havior with father from the qualities of parent-
infant interaction studied here can be readily
understood on the basis of previous research.
Moreover, the nonsignificant zero-order corre-
lations between sensitive parenting and disorga-
nization scores with mother and with father
should be noted. The theory that disorganized
161
attachment is related to frightening experiences
with the parent (e.g., Main & Hesse, 1990) is
likely to go unmeasured in a videotaped assess-
ment of parent-child interaction in a study,
such as ours, with a generally well-functioning
sample. Although the relation found between
maternal sensitivity and disorganized attach-
ment behavior suggests the etiological signifi-
cance of maternal sensitivity, a "third variable"
explanation would be more consistent with the
theoretical origins of disorganized attachment
advanced to date. That is, maternal sensitivity
may relate to disorganized attachment behavior
insofar as sensitivity is a marker of the absence
of infant experiences of a frightened or fright-
ening mother. The sensitive mother may be
careful to shield her child from such experi-
ences. However, one would not expect maternal
insensitivity to be particularly related or unre-
lated to experiences of a frightened or frighten-
ing parent. A frightened or frightening parent
probably represents less of a characteristic of
parenting than a personality characteristic or
result of environmental context. Obviously,
these speculations will require new studies de-
signed to address directly the parent-child in-
teractional origins of disorganized attachment.
Given that marital conflict was predictive of
disorganized attachment behavior with both
mother and father, it bears comment that the
infant's disorganized behavior with mother in
the strange situation was unrelated to such be-
havior with father. Although entirely specula-
tive at this point, such findings could suggest
that, under conditions of marital conflict, one
parent may present the more frightening or the
more frightened stimulus to the infant. Under
such conditions, one parent may be more reli-
ably capable of providing comfort to the infant
than the other after the conflict episode. Thus,
the link from marital conflict to disorganized
attachment behavior need not necessarily result
in disorganized attachment with both parents. It
may prove useful in this regard to focus on
individual behavior within observations of mar-
ital conflict and conflict negotiation as well as
the dyadically based ratings used in the present
study.
Family systems theorists have issued a chal-
lenge to look beyond the mother-child relation-
ship to a consideration of the implications of the
many relationships in families. The present
findings emphasize the importance of focusing
on whole-family processes in attempting to un-
162 OWEN AND COX
derstand child development. These findings
have illustrated effects of the characteristics
of one relationship within the familythe mar-
ital relationshipon other relationships (the
mother-child and father-child attachment rela-
tionships). In this relatively low-risk sample,
aspects of the marital relationship were impor-
tant in predicting disorganization in infant-
parent attachment relationships, over and above
predictions from parenting characteristics. In
addition, marital conflict was related to the se-
curity of infant-father attachment both directly
and through its effect on fathers' sensitive pa-
renting. Thus, better understanding of the cor-
relates of secure and nondisorganized attach-
ment was gained from looking beyond the
individual parent-child relationship to other
characteristics of family functioning. It is prob-
able that continued investigation of the whole
family system in which parent-child dyads are
embedded will allow a richer understanding of
the child's development and of family processes
contributing to development than a focus on
characteristics of parent-child interaction con-
sidered in isolation (Marvin & Stewart, 1990).
The type of study reported here, in which a
small number of families are intensively inves-
tigated by means of time-consuming observa-
tions, interviews, and questionnaires, provides
important leads for larger scale studies in which
hypotheses generated and preliminarily sup-
ported can be more powerfully tested.
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Received November 25, 1995
Revision received April 10, 1996
Accepted July 2, 1996

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