Did Your Childhood Shape How You Love? A New Study Looks to Primary Parents 👪 and Early Friendships for Answers 👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏾

TL;DR: A landmark 30-year longitudinal study of 705 people found that the quality of childhood relationships (especially with your mom and early friends) significantly predicts your attachment style in adulthood. But attachment styles can change, and your past does not determine your future.

Have you ever caught yourself pulling away from someone you actually like? Or maybe you've found yourself texting a little too much, just to make sure they're still interested?

If you've ever wondered why you do that and why closeness feels natural for some people and terrifying for others, the answer might start earlier than just your last relationship. It might start in kindergarten. Or earlier, like before you were even crawling.

A major new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Dugan et al., 2025) tracked 705 people across three decades (from infancy all the way to age 30) and looked at how the quality of childhood relationships predicted how securely those people connected with others as adults. The findings are striking, and honestly, kind of validating. So let's break it all down.

🧠 What Is Attachment Style, and Why Should You Care?

Before getting into the study, a quick primer. If you want a deeper look at attachment and how it shows up in romantic relationships, check out this earlier post on why some people catch feelings faster than others.

The short version: attachment theory suggests that the way we learned to connect with our earliest caregivers becomes a kind of internal template — a default setting — for how we approach closeness in adulthood.

Researchers measure attachment along two dimensions:

• Attachment anxiety: How much you worry about being abandoned or not being enough. High anxiety might look like needing a lot of reassurance, or panicking when someone doesn't text back quickly.

• Attachment avoidance: How comfortable you feel depending on others and letting them get close. High avoidance might look like shutting down emotionally or insisting you're "fine" even when you're really not.

  
  

When both of those are low, you land in what's called secure attachment, meaning you feel comfortable being close, you trust people to show up for you, and you don't spend much time agonizing over whether someone actually likes you. When one or both are high, the attachment is considered insecure.

Here's the important part: your attachment style isn't just about romantic relationships. It shapes how you connect with friends, family, and even how you relate to yourself.

📋 The Big Study: What Did Researchers Actually Find?

This study was so exciting (to me anyway!) because it wasn't a small survey or a one-time snapshot. The study analyzed data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. It was a prospective, longitudinal investigation that followed 1,364 children from infancy to age 15. Between 2018 and 2022, 705 of those original participants (now between ages 26 and 31) completed a follow-up that assessed their adult attachment orientations across four specific relationships: their mothers, fathers, best friends, and romantic partners.

In other words, the researchers didn't ask adults to guess what their childhood was like. They had actual data collected in real time, across decades.

Lead author Keely Dugan, an assistant professor of social personality psychology at the University of Missouri, and her colleagues examined how early levels and growth in relationship quality predicted adult attachment. The findings revealed some clear, consistent patterns.

👩 How Your Relationship With Your Mom Shapes You

Of all the findings, this one is probably the most striking.

Every single measure of the mother-child relationship quality that the researchers examined (maternal sensitivity, mother-child conflict, closeness, warmth, and hostility) predicted how secure participants felt in their adult relationships. Not just with their moms, but across all their adult relationships, including romantic partners, best friends, and fathers.

"People who felt closer to their mothers and had less conflict with their mothers in childhood tended to feel more secure in all of their relationships in adulthood," said Dugan. "That's a really striking finding because it demonstrates the enduring impact of that first person who is supposed to be there for you."

Here's what the data showed more specifically:

• Mothers who showed warmth and closeness were linked to lower attachment anxiety and avoidance in their children's adult relationships.

• Maternal hostility predicted higher anxiety and avoidance — not just with mom, but across all adult relationships assessed.

• Growth in maternal warmth over time appeared to have protective effects, particularly on mother-specific attachment in adulthood.

  
  

And here's something worth sitting with: the effect of maternal hostility on adult attachment remained significant even after researchers controlled for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and maternal education. The relationship quality mattered, independent of broader context. Note: most respondents listed their moms as their primary caregivers so that is why there is so much more information about the relationships moms have on our attachment styles from this study.

But this is not about getting caught up in blame or anger. Understanding the pattern isn't about being able to point a finger at your mom or get trapped in resentment. It's about recognizing a road map that was drawn for you before you had any say in the matter — so you can decide, consciously, how you want to redraw it.

👫 Your Childhood Friendships Matter More Than You Might Think

Here's the part that really surprised me...

When it came to predicting romantic attachment and friendship attachment in adulthood, early friendship quality was actually a stronger predictor than the maternal relationship. Take a minute to think about your earliest friendships.

"In general, if you had high-quality friendships and felt connected to your friends in childhood, then you felt more secure in romantic relationships and friendships at age 30," said Dugan.

The study found:

• Early friendship quality was strongly associated with lower attachment anxiety and avoidance in both adult romantic relationships and adult friendships.

• People who experienced increasingly close and deepening friendships across childhood and adolescence showed significant gains in security across those domains as adults.

• Social competence with peers, i.e. how well kids navigated relationships with others in general, predicted secure adult attachment across all relationship domains, not just friendships.

  
  

Why does this make sense? Because friendships are what researchers call horizontal relationships (they're built on reciprocity, mutual support, and learning to give and take). Romantic partnerships work the same way. So the skills you practiced on the playground — communication, sharing, resolving conflicts, staying loyal — turn out to be the exact skills that help build and maintain romantic love.

"When you have those first friendships at school, that's when you practice give-and-take dynamics," Dugan explained. "Relationships in adulthood then mirror those dynamics."

🤔 Think about your childhood friendships for a second. Were they easy, close, full of trust? Or were they marked by instability, conflict, or loneliness? Whatever your experience looked like, there's a good chance it's been subtly shaping how you show up in your closest relationships today. That's worth exploring, not judging.

👨 What About Your Dad?

The researchers were honest about this one: the associations between early experiences with fathers and adult attachment were fewer and less consistent than those found for mothers.

That said, some patterns did emerge:

• Father closeness and growth in closeness predicted lower attachment anxiety and avoidance in adulthood.

• Father-child conflict predicted higher anxiety and avoidance in father-specific attachment, which makes intuitive sense.

• Peer social competence (a key variable) predicted secure adult attachment across all domains, including father-specific.

  
  

One reason the paternal findings were weaker? This cohort was recruited in 1991, when fathers were even less involved in primary caregiving than they are today. "In cases where a father was the primary caregiver, the results might be flipped," Dugan noted. Research in this area is still evolving, and that's worth noting.

💪 What This Means for Your Attachment Style (It Is Not Destiny)

Okay. Deep breath. Because here's the part that matters most.

Learning that your attachment patterns are rooted in childhood can feel heavy. And maybe even leave you feeling a little helpless. But Dugan is clear: "You're definitely not doomed."

Evidence supports that adult attachment styles can (and do) change in response to later life experiences, therapy, and even month-to-month relationship experiences. The study's data show that attachment styles are malleable.

"You can have a not-so-great relationship with your parents and still develop a secure and healthy bond with a close friend or romantic partner in adulthood," Dugan said.

A few things worth holding onto:

• Later relationships matter. A supportive partner, a meaningful friendship, or a therapeutic relationship can all shift your attachment patterns over time.

• Awareness is itself a form of change. Recognizing your patterns is the first step toward choosing differently.

• Growth in relationship quality matters as much as early levels. The study didn't just look at how things started, it tracked how they changed. Improvement, even slow and gradual, has a measurable impact.

  
  

In other words, the research doesn't just describe where you came from. It points toward what's possible.

📚 Practical Takeaways for College Students

So what do you actually do with all of this? A few places to start:

Recognize your attachment style without shame. Secure, anxious, avoidant, or somewhere in between — your patterns developed for a reason. They were adaptations to the environment you grew up in. That context matters, and there's no judgment here.

Invest in the quality of your friendships now. The study found that friendship quality during childhood and adolescence predicted romantic attachment at 30. You're still in a window where the friendships you build and deepen are shaping your future relational blueprint.

Seek out secure relationships and relationship models. Exposure to healthy, secure dynamics, whether with friends, mentors, partners, or a therapist, can gradually update your internal template.

Consider therapy or intentional self-reflection work. If you recognize insecure patterns in yourself, that recognition is a starting point, not an endpoint. Therapists trained in attachment-based approaches can help you understand and shift those patterns.

Remember: growth is possible at every stage. The participants in this study were in their late 20s and early 30s — many of them still actively negotiating their attachment patterns. That means, you are not behind. You are right on time to do this work if you want to change your attachment style.

🌱 You're Not Defined by Your Childhood — But You Can Learn From It

The research doesn't say your childhood determines your fate. What it says is that your earliest relationships created a kind of starting point — a set of expectations about closeness, safety, and trust that have been running in the background ever since.

Understanding that starting point gives you something really powerful: the ability to examine it, challenge it, and change it. We talk about this power in my class A LOT.

Remember, your attachment style is not a verdict. It's just a window into how you learned to love. Learning, by definition, keeps going, so you're not done yet!

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What is attachment style and how is it measured? Attachment style refers to the characteristic ways a person thinks, feels, and behaves in close relationships. Researchers typically measure it along two dimensions: attachment anxiety (fear of abandonment or rejection) and attachment avoidance (discomfort with closeness and dependence). Low scores on both indicate a secure attachment style.

Does your attachment style change over time? Yes. While early experiences lay a foundation, attachment styles are malleable. Research shows they can shift in response to meaningful life experiences, supportive relationships, and also unhealthy relationships, and intentional therapeutic work. Some studies have even found month-to-month fluctuations based on positive and negative relationship experiences.

Which childhood relationships matter most for adult attachment? According to the Dugan et al. (2025) study, the mother-child relationship had the broadest impact on general adult attachment across all relationship types. Early friendship quality was an even stronger predictor specifically for adult romantic and friendship attachment. Social competence with peers also played a consistent, cross-domain role.

Is a difficult childhood a permanent disadvantage for relationships? No. The study's lead researcher, Keely Dugan, is explicit: "You're definitely not doomed." While early experiences are influential, later relationships, including close friendships, romantic partnerships, and therapeutic relationships, can meaningfully reshape attachment patterns over time.

How can college students start working on their attachment style? Start by identifying your own patterns without judgment. Build and invest in quality friendships. Seek out stable, supportive relationships. If anxiety or avoidance is getting in the way of your connections, working with a therapist trained in attachment-based approaches can be a powerful starting point.

Dugan, K. T., Fraley, R. C., Haltigan, J. D., Carlson, E. A., Groh, A. M., Simpson, J. A., & Roisman, G. I. (2026). The development of attachment anxiety and avoidance: A prospective, longitudinal test from infancy to adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-79270-001