Attachment Security and Friendship Representations of Children: The Moderating Role of Teacher–Child Representations

The present study examined the role of Turkish children’s attachment security in terms of predicting positive friendship representations in the preschool period and investigated the possible moderating function of the teacher–child representations (sensitivity, conflict resolution, harshness/punishment, and avoidance/emotional distance) in these predictive associations. We used the story completion method to understand children’s mental representations of their relationships with parents, teachers, and friends. The participants consisted of 115 children (65 boys) with a mean age of 66.97 months enrolled in seven classrooms in two state kindergartens in Türkiye. The results indicated that after controlling for children’s gender, there was a positive association between parent–child attachment security and positive friendship representations. Similarly, positive associations were found between children’s representations of sensitivity, conflict resolution, and avoidance/emotional distance in their relationships with teachers and their representations of positive friendship quality. Moderator analyses revealed that children’s representations of harshness/punishment in their relationships with teachers moderated the association between parent–child attachment security and positive friendship representations. Specifically, when children’s representations of harsh and punitive teachers were low, the relationship between parent–child attachment security and positive friendship was stronger. However, this relationship was not observed when children’s representations of harsh and punitive teachers were high. The results demonstrated the dynamic and interactive nature of the representations of children’s relationships with their parents, teachers, and friends. Implications for mental representations of children in close relationships are discussed.