The Importance of Parent-Child Attachment

The first in a new series of articles and essays

You can watch me read this article here, or read it as text below.

Parenting is complicated business these days. You can find literally thousands of books, experts, and professionals telling parents how to do their job. Each one offers some technique or tool that promises to unlock the secret to the perfect parenting strategy. And yet, we have higher rates of teen anxiety and depression than ever before. How do we account for this paradox? How is it that parents have become so insecure in their ability to raise healthy children that they feel inclined to outsource this task to therapists? And when they do, things don’t seem to be getting better for families or kids.

There’s a bit of irony here, since I am an adolescent therapist questioning our cultural reliance on adolescent therapists. But I’ve found myself puzzled by this strange contradiction: we have more “parenting resources” than ever before, yet parents feel increasingly ill-equipped to deal with the behavior and development of their kids.

There are ways in which therapy can be a useful supplement to family support, but there are many more tasks that cannot be outsourced to clinicians. And when I think about the hundreds of families I’ve worked with, the ones who seem to be doing best are ones in which the kids have a very close and intimate relationship with their parents. And it doesn’t seem to be correlated with parental love or effort: even devoted parents who sacrifice and toil for their children relentlessly can struggle to keep their kids connected to them. It seems to be less about what you do for them, and more about how you ARE with them. This is called attachment, and it’s a necessary, fundamental, and natural order of the parent-child relationship.

Attachment is what has allowed human families to raise healthy kids for thousands of years. Before PhDs, researchers, or parenting experts were part of the picture, societies were structured around this natural hierarchy of parent and child, and cultures have traditionally fostered this important attachment dynamic. And I’m not talking about coercion, abusive tactics or manipulation here. I know that some cultures make conformity the norm and the family unit can be used to enforce this. I’m talking about the necessary bond between parent and child which we’ve always relied on to keep kids safe and give them the best shot at a good life.

But today’s culture has become so alienated from the need for deeply rooted child-parent attachment that we see kids slipping away. As this deep heart-connection starts to unravel, kids, who need to attach to something, become increasingly obsessed with things like peer groups, digital media, and even identity groups or ideology.

In thinking about these issues, I’ve also realized that some of the advice I offer to parents, in individual consultations or through my private membership group, seems to greatly help some families and make little impact on others. The distinguishing feature seems to be the varying rootedness of attachment. When parents and kids are closely attached, kids WANT to open up to parents, share their secrets, and accept help from them. Kids who are detached interpret even the most neutral offer to help as an affront to their personhood (and simultaneously turn to other sources for their connection and validation). The attachment bond between child and parent can also be adversely impacted by indoctrination and belief systems which turn child against parents.  So I want to go back to basics and share some resources about attachment. Whether your teen is trans-identified, desisted, or struggling with anxiety, depression, focus, or self-esteem, any parent will be able to draw from the natural wisdom of attachment theory.

I found my way to Hold on to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté after it was recommended to me by two different people (who don't know each other) within the same week. I took that as a sign to read it, and I’m so glad I did. This is just one of those books that made me think, “Yes! We know this in our bones, but our heads have lead us so far astray.”  In one lecture, Neufeld, a developmental psychologist, discusses how to make sense of kids from an attachment and developmental perspective. He explains that new research about how to modify childhood behavior continues to pour out of labs and graduate research projects, but that researchers often fail to account for the two most important aspects of child psychology: what children need and how nature works.  I especially like his explanation of WHY insight about children’s nature is so important. He says “First of all, and very important, is insight concerning the roots and meaning of a child's behavior. To be able to see beyond. Insight. To see within the child. To make sense of a child from inside out. So important. To be able to read the anxious child as feeling unsafe, what to do will become much more obvious. When we read the aggressive child as frustrated and not yet had their tears about things they cannot change, we won’t be tempted to increase the frustration in their life…When we read the bossy, demanding child as in need of a strong, alpha-caring individual, we can get on with that challenge.”

Understanding what behavior REALLY means, helps you read between the lines—especially with gender, this is crucial to avoid debating with your child, getting stuck in ideological discussions, or bombarding them with medical information—all of which, by the way, will likely have zero positive impact!

Here’s how an understanding of attachment can be so meaningful:

If you’re a fan of Gender: A Wider Lens, you may remember when we spoke to Rose in Episode 109. Rose is the mother of 2 young boys, both of whom said they were girls at one point in time. In True Believer, she shares her story of affirming their female identities at first—because she truly thought this was the best way to honor their feelings, and stay connected. But Rose came to believe that children need their parents to help orient them towards truth, reality, and limitations. In that episode, she explained her process of deep self-reflection and how learning about parent-child attachment helped her recognize that she had been parenting based on a belief system she didn't even know she had.

In fact, in that episode, she actually talks about having taken some parenting courses through The Gordon Neufeld Institute, which she felt really helped her step into her parental authority. The second author of Hold on to Your Kids is Gabor Mate. He’s a physician who has written extensively about things like parenting, ADHD, and Trauma. I have to say, I vehemently disagree with much of what he believes about trauma, so if you come across that stuff, please do your research and take it with a grain of salt. But, still, I love what he and Neufeld produced with Hold on to Your Kids. It’s a great book and I recommend it to lots of parents in my work. Plus, I’ve heard back from so many of you that this book has played an instrumental role in giving you more confidence and belief in your ability to parent your children.

Of course, in addition to books like this one, many great resources for parents have come out since I originally wrote this—and Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy, is definitely one of them. In my May 2024 Newsletter I sing its praises and also share some of my criticisms of this book. We also spoke with Abigail on the podcast recently and you can watch or listen to that episode here.

I hope that parents will feel comforted in the message of attachment: you ARE the best answer for your kids’ distress. It is not easy to build up the confidence to stand strong in your role as a parent, especially if you’re dealing with a gender-questioning teen. Of course, this is especially relevant to parents of younger teens and kids still living at home. If you have an adult child and your attachment seems to be broken through estrangement or emotional distance, I highly recommend checking out another recent episode of Gender: A Wider Lens with estrangement expert, Joshua Coleman. His work, while he doesn’t explicitly describe it this way, is like a roadmap for estranged parents of adult children to heal their attachment relationship in strategic, small, incremental ways.

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And if you’re interested in how to apply some of these principles and understand the attachment relationship specifically in the context of gender-questioning, I did a very deep dive into this in my private membership group on SubscribeStar in July of 2021. If you are a Member of my parent membership group you’ll find it there. Or if you are a paid member of this Substack you can find it here.

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