愛着スタイルと乳幼児との接触時感情が養護性に与える影響 : 情緒応答性の関連の検討

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of child abuse cases in Japan. However, the causes of child abuse are still not well-understood. We need to find ways to prevent improper parenting. To this end, we conducted a survey on attachment, feelings of contact with infants, and thoughts and behaviors about nurturance among undergraduate and graduate students. The investigation revealed that when attachment anxiety is low, vivid memories of pleasant feelings during contact with children act as a modifier that significantly enhances nurturance. However, in case of high attachment anxiety, pleasant feelings are not effective as a modifier. As for attachment avoidance, the effect of pleasant emotions was not significant. However, in case of low attachment avoidance, high discomfort significantly increased the acceptance of active nursing roles. Therefore, when the attachment style is avoidant, it is important not to arouse unpleasant emotions and forget memories of unpleasant feelings during contact with infants in order to enhance nurturance. Furthermore, we investigated how emotional reading, one of the elements of emotional availability, changes depending on the level of nurturance. It was found that students with low nursing ability are more likely to feel that children are thinking and concentrating on their own or describe actions and states from the vague expression of infants than those with high nursing ability. Those with higher ability to provide nurturance tend to read the ambiguous expressions of infants communicating that they require emotional interaction with the caregiver than those with lower nurturance. In addition, it was shown that adolescent women are more likely to focus on the physical condition of children than adolescent men.