Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most
61 comments
·November 14, 2025taurath
scrubs
I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist. My observation is the more difficult cases of attachment in important adult relationships esp. partner/spouse is far more impacted by parents and their relationship than friends.
This doesn't gain say that in the ages of 15 to say 35 peer interactions are not there or impactful to the worse or better but extremes in the nuclear family are not to be underestimated.
hooskerdu
It could be said that for any of us to think we could understand - with such a relatively short and still arguably shoddy understanding of the mind - or especially could say… is possibly insane.
parpfish
One study doesn’t definitively prove anything, but this is a 30 year longitudinal analysis with 700 participants. It’s way bigger than a typical study
taurath
The study itself doesn't say anything of the sort that the article title and this thread title do.
I gaurantee you that if you polled any number of therapists what people's hangups are about it would be more likely to be the parents. Everyone I know is an inheritor of some significant amount of their family's generational trauma.
pfannkuchen
> ability to connect w friends is more predictive than observations they made of apparent attachment of parents
So for comparing studies all measuring this^, yes that’s true. But there could be a flaw in the methodology here, where their observations of parents and interpretation thereof may not be predictive even while the totality of parent behavior is.
aidenn0
My own anecdotal experience matches this.
I have a (now adult) child who was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder. She changed friends every 6 months, burning bridges behind her. She also cultivated the least-healthy friendships possible in whatever environment she found herself in.
baconbrand
How is she doing now?
jonahx
Also, even the proposed effect is modest:
> But early friendship bonds played an even bigger part than maternal relationships in the ways people navigated adult friendships and romantic partnerships, accounting for 4 percent of the variance in adults’ romantic partner- and best friend-specific attachment anxiety, and 10 to 11 percent in their partner- and best friend-specific avoidance.
Just slightly less modest that analogous parental predictors, according to their claims.
popalchemist
Bingo. This kind of science reporting is the worst.
puppymaster
also given the psychology field research replication crisis, I would wait to see if this research can be replicated down the road.
pedalpete
My first reaction was to refute this, but I think I've convinced myself this may be correct, assuming attachment styles are the right frame.
I've been painted with the Avoidant brush, and logically it makes sense, broken home, removed from mother, moved regularly changing schools once a year for 5 years.
However, my siblings are the opposite. We come from the same house, they didn't change schools as often as I did, which made me wonder how we could be so different.
But when looked through the lens of friendships forming the attachment style, it makes more sense. I changed schools more often than my siblings, and therefore had more friendship changes, and less ability for attachment.
null
jcims
Similar story here. Six schools by seventh grade. I think it does mess with you a bit.
kimfc
Yeah I'm the same, I think I went to nine schools by the time I went to college in the fall of 2019, most of the school changes happening in elementary school. It really does effect your ability to make friends
pedalpete
I've found that I don't have trouble making friends, but I've put myself in situations where friendships come and go.
I went from moving around a bunch, and making new friends at each place, to living in Whistler, BC, where you've got an annual turnover of new people, then I settled down in Bondi Beach, Australia, which doesn't have the turnover of Whistler, but not far off.
faidit
Same. The only friends that stuck around were people from the internet.
interroboink
Also, beware of taking generalities (such as the claims of this study) and applying that directly that to your specific life, or anyone else's.
I mean, I like your comment and am glad you got thinking about this, but it's just a line of reasoning that I see a lot and I wish I saw less, so that's why I bring it up (:
"True for most people" does not imply "true for me" or "true for that person over there".
And the reverse is not valid either, of course - "true for me" does not imply "true for most people."
There's always some tension between people's individual anecdotes and experiences (which are fascinating, and I like), and the claims of broader studies like this one.
Sometimes I try to remind myself of this with the "on average, people have 2.3 children" factoid. Obviously, nobody actually has 2.3 children; the general truth does not necessarily apply to specific individuals; potentially not even a single one.
pedalpete
100% agree. I actually think of attachment styles like this generally. Your upbringing does not dictate your life, it influences.
cheesecompiler
The family is a system, with different roles played by each participant. For instance, in toxic families, there is often one scapegoat, with an anxious attachment style, that affords the avoidant types in the family to participate in delusions.
What are the dynamics like of everyone in your family?
lordnacho
> But early friendship bonds played an even bigger part than maternal relationships in the ways people navigated adult friendships and romantic partnerships, accounting for 4 percent of the variance in adults’ romantic partner- and best friend-specific attachment anxiety, and 10 to 11 percent in their partner- and best friend-specific avoidance.
Are those numbers r-squared figures? Seems like there's a lot more variance to be explained?
dash2
Right. It also suggests two possibilities:
1. Maybe the measurements are just very noisy. In which case they may also have other biases. 2. Maybe there are systematic causes which the study didn't capture. If so, controlling for them might change the results.
Sigh. When I see a study headline like this I feel confident about two things. First, the study will have a weak design with no serious attention paid to causality, genetic confounding etc... second, the response to it will be full of people going "yes, that fits my N=1 anecdote" or "no that doesn't fit my N=1 anecdote", in other words, critiquing the weak methodology with an even weaker methodology (handwaving appeals to personal experience).
One reason social science is hard is there isn't much market for the truth. People just want a nice story to tell themselves.
djmips
I've observed children who have had tremendous close friends in childhood but were unable to recreate that in adulthood. Sometimes it's easier to make friends when you're 5.
herpdyderp
I'd still rather be friends with a bunch of 5 year olds. (Unfortunately everyone would probably think that's super creepy.)
kayodelycaon
It’s really sad that that’s considered creepy.
I got a lot of flak for going to a high school play in my late twenties. I had played D&D with the kid and his mom every week for years. He was great to hang out with when he was 14.
ryandrake
The whole country is engrossed in a decade+ long "pedo panic" to the point where you can't support a friend's kid by attending a school play, take them for ice cream, or (sometimes) even take your own child to the park without getting the side-eye from nosey nobodies.
Aeolun
Kids in that age range are uncomplicated. The only thing they really desire is that you play with them. They just don’t consider anything beyond that.
But it seems hard for many adults to play with children, so it becomes this anomalous thing, even though I’m fairly certain it’s just something we’ve convinced ourselves adults “don’t do”.
Tag is still fun, whether you are 7 or 37.
0_____0
There's a joke here...
Q: How do you make friends in Boston? A: Same way everyone else does. In kindergarten.
voidfunc
Didn't really have friends as a kid, probably explains why I prefer the cold glow of a computer.
64718283661
Same, so what should one do if AI ruins it? It hasn't yet. It's not good enough, but with the amount of money pouring in I think it could be cracked within 5 years. I hope not.. Coding with AI ruins the enjoyment. And willfully falling behind others using tools to be better than anyone without it isn't good either. I enjoy computers because my skill level is high enough that I can make money on my own and do what I want by using my skills to beat competitors. My research and experiments are meaningful because it is not all so trivial and instantly replicable yet.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Get a 6502 acorn and write assembly
Aeolun
Not sure this is generalizable. I had lots of friends as a kid. Still prefer the computer :)
walterreid
[dead]
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Know what you mean
kayodelycaon
I think it’s a bit more general than that because I didn’t have any “childhood friends”, just bullies who were never punished.
What I did have was a great number of excellent adults in my life. In many ways, they were more my peers than anyone my own age.
Their example and support made my parents instruction significantly more effective despite the serious challenges with my mental health that they didn’t know how to handle.
makeitdouble
On the participants composition:
> 705 participants and their families over 3 decades, from the time participants were infants until they were approximately 30 years old (Mage = 28.6, SD = 1.2; 78.7% White, non-Hispanic, 53.6% female, 46.4% male).
It looks like an a fairly culturally homogeneous pannel, it would be interesting to also have a breakdown on religion (especially due to the communal effects) and income.
makeitdouble
From https://psycnet.apa.org/manuscript/2026-79270-001.pdf
The income data: ------------------------------ Student status Part-time 34 (4.9%) Full-time 61 (8.7%) Employment Part-time, for pay 85 (12.1%) Full-time, for pay 516 (73.7%) Individual income <US $10,000 78 (11.1%) US $10,000–$29,999 167 (23.9%) US $30,000–$49,999 179 (25.6%) US $50,000–$99,999 213 (30.4%) US $100,000+ 63 (9.0%) Household income <US $20,000 75 (10.8%) US $20,000–$49,999 163 (23.5%) US $50,000–$99,999 248 (35.7%) US $100,000–$149,999 126 (18.1%) US $150,000+ 83 (11.9%)
iambateman
They didn’t find any effect of fathers on attachment style and I’m confused…I’ve heard countless stories about how it’s hard for people to connect as adults because of how their dad was toward them.
jweir
And moms are the gate keeps of their kids friends.
mvkel
There's a whole book on this called "Hold On To Your Kids." It feels a little hand-wavy, categorically dismissing all social media as evil, but the core message feels right: don't stop being a parent.
shalmanese
We've known roughly this since The Nurture Assumption (1998). Where parents do have an impact is in being able to choose the social circles their children are immersed in.
maxerickson
The discussion of toddlers more or less code switching is quite interesting.
Once they have a sense of self, even little kids will be very careful about revealing their home life to their school friends, and the same about school to their parents.
benrawk
The title is false, the study finds that moms have a large impact on attachment style
No, one study doesn’t upend the last few decades of understanding of emotional attachment.
The study simply says that ability to connect w friends is more predictive than observations they made of apparent attachment of parents.
This happens much later so of course it’s more predictive of the actual end effects - that’s when attachment styles actually show up for the first time. Kids grow up to be very adaptive toward their parents but when they get to the rest of society that’s when the failures of connection and the failed bids for attention show up.
A very resilient kid will do fine with friends even with a very bad attachment environment. A very sensitive kid or one with developmental problems will struggle in social environments.