Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 61
allowed respondents to choose the secure category even when there was recognition of some lack ofmaternal care.
The third possible explanation is idealization of attachment. Most people desire
to recall their relationship with their mothers as positive. Only when asked about
specific behaviors will they begin to acknowledge that there may have been some negative
experiences. This may be particularly true of seminary students who are more sensitive
to being perceived in the best possible light. Consistent with Hall's (1997) description of
pastors, many of the students surveyed are already in ministry and consequently
experiencing the pressure from the communities they serve ofmaintaining an idealized
identity. Consequently, when asked to choose between just three maternal parenting
styles, they chose to idealize their mother by choosing the secure style. And the fourth consideration is the role of affect in maintaining an affectional bond
from childhood into adulthood. Having respondents reporting two divergent parenting
styles opens the possibility for an adult to have two competing affective regulatory control systems. Caregiving whether optimal or neglectful may be normalized in the mind
of a child. Throughout childhood, primary strategies to maintain optimal parenting may
have been competing with secondary strategies defending against neglectful parenting. This is consistent with Kobak and Sceery' s (1988) description of adults judged secure in
the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Those judged secure were able to access distress
related memories in order to reflect on attachment relationships and still maintain a
cooperative interview discourse. By contrast, individuals employing secondary or
insecure strategies were prone to dysfunctional regulation of emotions. These insecure
strategies may be hyperactivating strategies which foster excessive or exaggerated
responses (Cassidy & Kobak, 1988). Therefore insecure affective strategies resulted in the reporting of secure parenting even though their parenting was less than optimal. The
role of affect in adult relationships needs further exploration and definitive research.
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