APA Citation
Roisman, G., Padrón, E., Sroufe, L., & Egeland, B. (2002). Earned-Secure Attachment Status in Retrospect and Prospect. *Child Development*, 73(4), 1204-1219. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00467
Summary
This landmark research from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study demonstrated that approximately 40% of adults with insecure childhood attachments achieve "earned security"—the capacity for stable, secure relationships despite traumatic beginnings. Unlike "continuous security" (those who were always securely attached), earned security develops through psychological work that transforms early adversity into coherent understanding. The study found that earned-secure individuals function comparably to continuously-secure individuals in adult relationships, proving that early attachment patterns, while influential, are not destiny. This finding offers profound hope for survivors of narcissistic parenting.
Why This Matters for Survivors
If you grew up with a narcissistic parent and fear you're doomed to repeat dysfunctional patterns, this research provides evidence-based hope. 40% of people with insecure childhoods achieve earned security—stable, healthy adult relationships despite their traumatic beginnings. The path to earned security involves developing a coherent narrative of your experience, processing the associated emotions, and learning new relational patterns. Your childhood shaped you, but it doesn't have to define your future relationships. Healing is documented, measurable, and achievable.
What This Research Found
40% achieve earned security. The study found that approximately 40% of adults with insecure childhood attachments develop earned security—the capacity for stable, secure relationships despite traumatic beginnings. This finding challenges the deterministic view that early attachment permanently shapes relationship capacity.
Earned security equals continuous security in function. Adults with earned security function comparably to those with continuous security (secure attachment from childhood) in their adult relationships. The paths differ, but the destinations are equivalent. Earned-secure individuals have stable relationships, can provide security to their own children, and demonstrate the hallmarks of secure attachment.
Coherent narratives distinguish earned security. What marks earned security is the capacity to discuss childhood experiences coherently—acknowledging what happened, understanding its impact, and maintaining emotional regulation while doing so. This “coherent narrative” indicates that experience has been processed and integrated rather than remaining as unresolved trauma.
The Minnesota Study provides unique evidence. This research draws on the Minnesota Longitudinal Study, which has followed participants from before birth through adulthood since 1975. This long-term design allows researchers to directly measure childhood attachment and track outcomes decades later, providing stronger evidence than retrospective studies.
Why This Matters for Survivors
Your childhood doesn’t define your future. If you grew up with narcissistic parenting and fear you’re doomed to repeat patterns or incapable of healthy relationships, this research offers evidence-based hope. 40% of people with similar beginnings achieve earned security. Your early attachment shaped you, but it doesn’t determine you.
The path to security is known. Earned security isn’t mysterious or random. It develops through identifiable processes: creating a coherent narrative of your experience, processing the emotions associated with that experience, and learning new relational patterns. These are the very goals of effective therapy for narcissistic abuse survivors.
Your work has purpose. The difficult process of understanding what happened in your family, feeling the grief and anger, and learning to relate differently—this isn’t endless processing or wallowing. It’s the documented path to earned security. Each insight, each processed emotion, each healthy interaction moves you toward the secure attachment you didn’t receive in childhood.
You can break the cycle. Parents with earned security provide secure attachment for their own children at rates comparable to continuously-secure parents. Achieving earned security doesn’t just heal you—it prevents transmission to the next generation. The pattern can stop with you.
Clinical Implications
Earned security is a treatment goal. For patients with insecure attachment from narcissistic parenting, earned security provides a concrete outcome to work toward. It’s achievable, measurable (through attachment interviews), and predicts healthy relationship functioning.
Focus on narrative coherence. The Adult Attachment Interview used in this research assesses narrative coherence—can the person discuss childhood experiences clearly, acknowledging what happened while maintaining emotional regulation? Therapy should support developing this coherent narrative, transforming fragmented, avoided, or overwhelming material into integrated understanding.
The therapeutic relationship matters. The therapy relationship itself can be a corrective attachment experience, providing what the original relationship lacked: consistent attunement, emotional containment, and reliable presence. For patients who’ve never experienced secure attachment, the therapeutic relationship may be their first.
Time and patience required. Earned security develops over years, not weeks. Patients may need to understand that secure attachment is a long-term outcome, not an immediate result. Progress may be non-linear, but the destination is achievable.
Not just insight. Earned security requires behavioral change, not just understanding. Patients need to practice new relational patterns—in therapy, in relationships, in daily interactions—not just intellectually understand their history.
How This Research Is Used in the Book
This research appears in Chapter 21: Breaking the Spell as one of the most hopeful findings in attachment research:
“One of the most hopeful findings in attachment research is the phenomenon of ‘earned security.’ While our early attachment experiences powerfully shape our relational patterns, they do not determine them irrevocably. Research indicates that 40% of people with insecure childhood attachments achieve earned security in adulthood—they develop the capacity for stable, secure relationships despite their traumatic beginnings.”
The chapter identifies the three components of earned security: “developing a coherent narrative of their experience (understanding what happened and why), emotional processing (feeling and integrating the associated emotions), and behavioural change (learning and practising new relational patterns).”
Historical Context
This 2002 study emerged from one of developmental psychology’s most important longitudinal projects. The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, begun in 1975, followed high-risk families from pregnancy through adulthood, providing unprecedented data on how early experience shapes development.
The concept of earned security addressed a tension in attachment research: early experience is powerful, but people do recover from adverse childhoods. By demonstrating that earned-secure adults function comparably to continuously-secure adults, this research provided empirical grounding for therapeutic optimism. It showed that attachment is modifiable—that healing is not just desirable but documentable.
Further Reading
- Main, M., & Goldwyn, R. (1994). Adult attachment rating and classification systems. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.
- Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Basic Books.
- Sroufe, L.A. (2005). Attachment and development: A prospective, longitudinal study from birth to adulthood. Attachment & Human Development, 7(4), 349-367.
- Siegel, D.J. (1999). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press.
- Herman, J.L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.
About the Author
Glenn I. Roisman, PhD is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He is a leading researcher on attachment, interpersonal relationships, and developmental psychopathology.
This research emerged from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, one of the most important long-term studies in developmental psychology. Beginning in 1975 with mothers in their third trimester, this study has followed participants from before birth through adulthood, providing unique data on how early experiences shape later development.
Co-authors L. Alan Sroufe and Byron Egeland are foundational figures in attachment research, having led the Minnesota study for decades. Their work established much of what we know about how early attachment predicts later development—and how that trajectory can be modified.
Historical Context
Published in 2002, this study addressed a crucial question: Are adults with difficult childhoods inevitably damaged in their relationship capacity? Earlier attachment research had emphasized the power of early experience, sometimes creating a sense of determinism. This study provided the empirical foundation for a more hopeful view: while early experience matters enormously, it doesn't irrevocably determine adult outcomes. The concept of earned security offered both theoretical insight (attachment can change) and practical hope (recovery is possible).
Frequently Asked Questions
Earned security describes adults who had insecure attachment in childhood but developed the capacity for secure, stable relationships through psychological work. Unlike continuous security (being securely attached from childhood), earned security is achieved later through processing early experiences, developing coherent understanding of what happened, and learning new relational patterns. Functionally, earned-secure adults are indistinguishable from continuously-secure adults in their relationship quality.
Continuously-secure individuals had 'good enough' parenting from the start—their security was never disrupted. Earned-secure individuals had insecure or disorganized attachment in childhood but developed security later. The difference is in the path, not the destination. Research shows both groups function similarly in adult relationships; earned-secure individuals just had to work harder to get there.
Of adults who had insecure attachment in childhood, approximately 40% achieve earned security by adulthood. This means childhood attachment, while powerful, doesn't determine adult outcomes for a substantial minority. The other 60% may remain insecure, but this doesn't mean they can't change—it means they hadn't yet achieved earned security at the time of measurement. The percentage may increase with age, therapy, and life experience.
Research identifies three key components: (1) Developing a coherent narrative—understanding what happened in childhood and why, making sense of the chaos; (2) Emotional processing—feeling and integrating the associated emotions rather than avoiding or being overwhelmed by them; (3) Behavioral change—learning and practicing new relational patterns, often through therapy or healthy relationships that provide corrective experiences.
Yes—therapy is one of the primary pathways to earned security. Effective therapy provides what the original attachment relationship lacked: consistent attunement, emotional regulation support, and a secure base from which to explore painful material. The therapeutic relationship itself can be a corrective attachment experience. However, therapy isn't the only path; some achieve earned security through other supportive relationships.
Adults with earned security can discuss their childhoods coherently—they acknowledge what happened, understand its impact, and have processed the associated emotions. In contrast, insecure adults often have incoherent narratives: dismissing childhood as unimportant, getting lost in details, or becoming overwhelmed when discussing it. The coherent narrative indicates that experience has been metabolized into understanding rather than remaining as unprocessed trauma.
No. Earned security involves acknowledging reality, not denying it. Earned-secure adults clearly recognize parental failures and their impacts. What changes is the relationship to these memories: they no longer trigger overwhelming emotion or defensive dismissal. Understanding doesn't mean excusing; it means the experience has been integrated rather than remaining as an ongoing source of disturbance.
Children of narcissists typically develop insecure or disorganized attachment—the parent wasn't a reliable source of safety. This research shows such children can develop earned security: the capacity for healthy adult relationships despite their beginnings. Recovery requires the work this research identifies: coherent narrative, emotional processing, new patterns. The narcissistic parent's damage was real, but it need not be permanent.