| Families that reside in low income communities have higher rates of non-resident, biological fathers. Although there is a substantial body of literature on attachment in adolescence, much less is known about both attachment quality and trajectories across adolescence with non-resident, biological fathers. Using longitudinal data from a sample of over 2,000 low income families from the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study, the current study will investigate trajectories of attachment quality between adolescents and their non-resident, biological father and delinquency across adolescence, as well as how the two constructs co-vary. Results indicated that on average, feelings of trust and communication declined across adolescence, rates of delinquency increased, and feelings of anger and alienation remained stable, although there were individual differences in trajectories of each. After the addition of covariates into the model, the only the slopes of anger/alienation and delinquency remained significant (B = 0.15, SE = 0.05, p < 0.01), such that individuals who were changing in anger/alienation were also changing in delinquency. The results indicate that attachment between adolescents and their non-resident fathers is not a particularly influential predictor of delinquency above and beyond the effect of other ecological risk factors. While was found that individuals changing in anger/alienation were also changing in delinquency, this relationship was not clear enough to estimate the direction of the changes. Despite this, low-income, minority adolescents do appear to display unique attachment trajectories, and this should be noted in future research in to similar samples. |
