Quality of Attachment to Parents and Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Adolescents: a Comparative Investigation about the Role of Fathers and Mothers

This study aimed to study the relationships between quality of attachment to mother and father, and symptoms of internalizing and externalizing during middle adolescence; to compare the father’s and mother’s roles in possible psychopathology in adolescents and to examine differences between the motheradolescent and father-adolescent relationships as an important predictor for behavioral-emotional problems. Participants including 337 students selected by multiphasic cluster sampling completed inventory of parent attachment (IPPA) and the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment). Results showed that more attachment to parents was negatively related to internalizing as well as externalizing symptoms. Also the positive relationship between adolescents and their parents, trust and communication, were negatively related and alienation was positively related to internalizing and externalizing symptoms. More specifically, trust to mother in boys and attachment to father in girls were strongest predictors of internalizing symptoms and alienation of father was most important predictor of externalizing symptoms in both Sex. In total, in attention to findings it seems the role of fathers in incidence of behavioral and emotional problems in adolescents, specially externalizing symptoms, is important and more investigations about the underlying mechanisms of this influence are needed.