Childhood and Emerging Adult Bonding in Native American Stepfamilies

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine how early childhood bonding in Native American children, who experienced being in a stepfamily, impacted their patterns of closeness in their emerging adult relationships. We also identified differences between our findings with the Native American population and the Caucasian sample used in our study. Data came from the Stepfamily Experiences Project (STEP), a data source on stepfamily life, collected in 2013 by researchers at Brigham Young University.

Method: The data came from a nationally-based quota sample of 1,593 emerging adults, ages 18-30, who lived in a stepfamily between the ages of 8 and 18. The survey used to collect data was conducted by Qualtrics, a US-based research firm that specializes in quantitative and qualitative research for universities. There were 340 Native American participants and 1,090 Caucasian participants. 

We ran a total of four regression models comparing our Native American and Caucasian participants. Our first model assessed the relationship between childhood bonding and insecure emerging adult bonding. Our second model assessed the relationship between childhood bonding and the secure emerging adult bonding variable. Models 3 and 4 were ran the same as Model 1 and Model 2 but we included the control variables of sex, age, how the step-family formed, the age of the child at the stepfamily formation, current relationship status, and years spent in the stepfamily. 

Results: Although we found that both populations in our study were affected by their childhood bonding patterns, Native Americans were significantly affected by the stepfamily process and were more susceptible to insecure adult bonding than the Caucasian population. We also found that the Native American population had higher levels of stress and less secure bonding with their step-parent during the stepfamily transition than the Caucasian population. Finally, we found that the years spent in the stepfamily were critical to not only the child-(step)parent relationship, but to the child’s overall level of bonding in their emerging adulthood years. Overall, these regressions and their results suggest that childhood bonding is closely related to emerging adulthood bonding and has significant effects on the odds of having secure emerging adult bonding.  

Implications: Social workers and other helping professionals should help the (step)parent-child relationship by creating a pattern of healthy, secure relationships and bonding by helping the (step)parents a) create a loving atmosphere in the household, b) maintaining a warm relationship between the residential biological parent and the child, c) maintaining a warm relationship between the residential stepparent and the child, d) improve the communication between the child and both the biological and stepparent, e) educate the stepparent on how to comfort the child, and f) increasing the amount of physical contact, specifically hugging, between the stepparent and the child. Future research should be done to assess bonds between residential step parent and child, and how that relationship affects future relationships. This may give insight into how important the step parent-child relationships are, and how much focus needs to be on these relationships during divorce transitions.