APA Citation
Dagan, O., & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2021). Early attachment networks to multiple caregivers: History, assessment models, and future research recommendations. *New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development*, 2021(180), 75-95. https://doi.org/10.1002/cad.20446
Summary
Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz present a comprehensive review of attachment theory's evolution from single-caregiver models to understanding complex networks of multiple attachment relationships. They examine how children form distinct attachment bonds with different caregivers (parents, grandparents, daycare providers) and how these relationships interact within broader family systems. The research synthesizes decades of attachment network studies, proposing new assessment frameworks that capture the complexity of modern caregiving arrangements and their impact on child development and emotional regulation.
Why This Matters for Survivors
Understanding attachment networks helps survivors recognize how narcissistic parents may have systematically disrupted their connections to other caring adults. This research validates that healthy development requires multiple secure relationships, not just one primary caregiver. For survivors whose narcissistic parent isolated them from extended family or other supportive figures, this work explains how such isolation damaged their capacity for trust and emotional regulation across relationships.
What This Research Establishes
Children naturally form distinct attachment bonds with multiple caregivers, creating complex networks of relationships that serve different emotional and developmental needs throughout childhood and beyond.
Attachment networks provide protective factors against trauma and adversity, with secure relationships to extended family, teachers, or other caring adults buffering the negative effects of problematic primary caregiving.
Modern assessment approaches must capture attachment complexity beyond the traditional mother-child dyad, recognizing that children’s emotional regulation and social development emerge from their entire network of caring relationships.
Disrupted attachment networks have cascading effects on emotional development, interpersonal functioning, and the capacity to form trusting relationships across the lifespan.
Why This Matters for Survivors
If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you likely experienced systematic disruption of your natural attachment networks. Narcissistic parents often isolate their children from grandparents, extended family, or other caring adults who might provide alternative models of healthy relationships. This isolation wasn’t accidental—it served to maintain the narcissistic parent’s control and prevent you from accessing the emotional support and reality-checking that other secure relationships provide.
Understanding attachment networks helps you recognize that your struggles with trust, emotional regulation, or maintaining relationships aren’t personal failings. When your narcissistic parent disrupted your access to multiple caring relationships, they damaged your innate capacity to develop diverse strategies for managing emotions and connecting with others. This research validates that healthy development requires a village of caring adults, not just one primary caregiver.
The good news is that attachment networks can be rebuilt in adulthood. Every secure relationship you form—whether with a therapist, friend, partner, or mentor—helps repair the attachment wounds created by narcissistic parenting. These new connections provide opportunities to experience the safety, attunement, and emotional regulation that were missing in childhood.
This research also explains why recovery often involves grieving not just the relationship with your narcissistic parent, but also all the other relationships that were lost or damaged due to their interference. Recognizing this broader loss is an important step in understanding the full scope of narcissistic abuse’s impact on your life.
Clinical Implications
Therapists working with survivors of narcissistic abuse should assess the client’s entire attachment network history, not just the primary parent-child relationship. Understanding which relationships were disrupted, maintained, or never allowed to form provides crucial information about the client’s attachment resources and areas of vulnerability. This network perspective helps clinicians identify both sources of ongoing support and patterns of relational difficulty.
Treatment planning should include explicit attention to building new secure attachments within the therapeutic relationship and beyond. The therapist-client relationship often serves as a corrective attachment experience, but clinicians should also help clients identify and cultivate other potential secure relationships in their lives. Group therapy, support groups, and community connections can all serve as vehicles for expanding the client’s attachment network.
Psychoeducation about attachment networks helps clients understand their symptoms within a developmental context rather than pathologizing their responses to trauma. When clients learn that their difficulties with trust, emotional regulation, or relationship maintenance stem from disrupted attachment networks, they often experience significant relief and reduced self-blame. This understanding can motivate engagement in treatment and provide hope for recovery.
Family therapy approaches may need modification when working with narcissistic family systems. Traditional network interventions that assume all family members are capable of change may be contraindicated when narcissistic parents remain actively harmful. Instead, therapists should help clients assess which family relationships might be salvageable and which require boundaries or complete disconnection for healing to occur.
How This Research Is Used in the Book
“Narcissus and the Child” draws on Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz’s network model to explain how narcissistic parents systematically disrupt their children’s access to multiple secure relationships. This research provides the theoretical foundation for understanding why isolation is such a common feature of narcissistic family systems and how it amplifies the impact of abuse.
“When Emma began therapy, she couldn’t understand why she felt so lost and alone despite having what others saw as a ‘close’ relationship with her mother. As we explored her childhood attachment network, it became clear that her narcissistic mother had systematically sabotaged Emma’s relationships with her grandmother, aunts, and family friends—anyone who might offer Emma the emotional attunement her mother was incapable of providing. Understanding this pattern helped Emma recognize that her loneliness wasn’t evidence of being fundamentally unlovable, but the natural result of having her attachment network deliberately dismantled by someone who feared sharing her love and loyalty.”
Historical Context
This comprehensive review was published at a pivotal moment when the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical importance of understanding complex caregiving networks. As families faced unprecedented stressors and traditional support systems were disrupted, the need to conceptualize attachment beyond simple dyadic relationships became more urgent than ever. The authors synthesized decades of research to provide frameworks for understanding how modern families function as interconnected systems of care.
Further Reading
• Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1986). Discovery of an insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In T. B. Brazelton & M. W. Yogman (Eds.), Affective development in infancy (pp. 95-124). Ablex Publishing.
• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human development: Research perspectives. Developmental Psychology, 22(6), 723-742.
• Howes, C. (1999). Attachment relationships in the context of multiple caregivers. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 671-687). Guilford Press.
About the Author
Or Dagan is a developmental psychologist specializing in attachment theory and trauma-informed interventions. His research focuses on how early caregiving relationships shape emotional regulation and interpersonal functioning across the lifespan.
Abraham Sagi-Schwartz is Professor Emeritus at the University of Haifa and a leading authority on attachment theory. His groundbreaking work on cross-cultural attachment patterns and multiple caregiving relationships has influenced decades of developmental research and clinical practice.
Historical Context
Published during the COVID-19 pandemic when family structures faced unprecedented stress, this review addresses the urgent need to understand how disrupted caregiving networks affect child development and recovery.
Frequently Asked Questions
Narcissistic parents often isolate children from other caring adults through manipulation, control, or creating conflicts with extended family members, preventing the formation of multiple secure attachments that are crucial for healthy development.
Yes, research shows that secure attachments with other caregivers (grandparents, teachers, mentors) can provide protective factors and alternative models for healthy relationships, though they cannot completely eliminate the impact of narcissistic abuse.
It helps survivors recognize that their struggles stem from disrupted attachment systems, not personal failings, and identifies pathways for healing through building new secure relationships in adulthood.
Multiple secure attachments provide children with various models for managing emotions and stress. When narcissistic parents disrupt these networks, children lose access to diverse coping strategies and emotional support systems.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends can serve as secondary attachment figures, providing emotional security and alternative perspectives that buffer against the effects of narcissistic parenting.
Through therapy, support groups, and intentionally cultivating relationships with trustworthy individuals, survivors can develop new secure attachments that help heal early attachment wounds.
Yes, children have an innate capacity to form distinct attachment relationships with different caregivers, each serving unique emotional and developmental needs throughout childhood.
Adults who experienced disrupted attachment networks may struggle with trust, have difficulty maintaining multiple close relationships, or exhibit anxious or avoidant patterns across different relationship types.