Reviewed by Kimberly Renk, Ph.D.
Raising Parents: Attachment, Parenting and Child Safety by Patricia McKinsey Crittenden provides a unique perspective on the relationship between events that occur as children progress through different developmental periods and the attachment patterns that they exhibit. This book also examines parents who exhibit problematic and/or abusive parenting behaviors and treatments that may be applicable to improving the situation of families where parenting has not been optimal. In particular, Raising Parents describes the Dynamic-Maturational Model of attachment, a model that includes references to the works of John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and Urie Bronfenbrenner. This model suggests that the ongoing development of individuals in families is part of a dynamic interaction in which early experience can influence later development . As part of this model, children's attachment to their parents is important in helping them adapt to different circumstances. Further, the manner in which individuals process information is important in understanding how individuals adapt (or not) to their environment . These attachment and information processing components are used throughout the book to provide interpretations of why mothers and fathers may parent in the manner that they do and to theorize about how treatment interventions may be improved to better address problematic and/or abusive parenting. Overall, Raising Parents describes an interesting theory that has great applicability for better understanding and assisting mothers and fathers who are using problematic and/or abusive parenting behaviors.
In the first section of this book, Crittenden (2008) discusses the major developments that may occur throughout early childhood, the school years, and the transition to adulthood. These developments are put in the context of different pathways that are relevant to the Dynamic-Maturational Model. In particular, the manner in which children form attachments to important individuals in their lives (particularly parents), exhibit attachment patterns, and process information is considered. suggests that some children can process cognitive and affective information in a balanced manner if their parents engage satisfactorily in essential parenting functions (i.e., reproducing and then protecting their children in a variety of ways so that their children may reach reproductive maturity themselves). Such balanced information processing can help children to function adaptively. In contrast, when parenting is not optimal, some children engage in patterns of information processing that result in too much reliance on