The Influence of Early Parent- Child Attachment Style on Married Couple’s Relationship Attachment Style: A Case of Nairobi Christian Centre, Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

The high rate of couple detachment with each other in the Kenyan Church and society at large has become a real threat in married couple‟s health relationship. Based on attachment theory, the purpose of the study was to identify how early parental child attachment style influence married couple attachment style. The objectives of the study included such as; exploring on how early parental child attachment style influences a married couple‟s attachment style; examining the influence of attachment style perception construct in early parental child attachment style on married couple‟s attachment style and; exploring on how the father figure and the mother figure attachment style influences a married couple‟s attachment style. Participants were drawn from Nairobi Christian Centre in Nairobi County and consisted of 20 married couples in the Church. Of these, 20 participants were male and 20 other participants were female in their different stages of marital couple relationship. The study adopted a correlational research design which sought to examine the relationship between the variables. A questionnaire was used to collect data in the study. Respondents were sampled using simple random sampling from the total population of all the married couples in the Church. A Multiple Logistic Regression analysis was done to test for the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable simultaneously. A Pearson Correlation Coefficient was done to measure the linear correlation between early parental child attachment style and couple attachment style. The data was analysed quantitatively and the results presented using charts, graphs and frequency tables. In the findings, the descriptive statistics on the Multiple Logistic Regression analysis demonstrated a positive relationship that was identified where an early parental child attachment style influenced the couples‟ attachment style. The emotional availability of the parents was significantly acknowledged by the couples as assumed by the research study. The Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.857, with a P-Value of 0.000 indicated the significance of father and/or mother figure early childhood attachment style influence on couple attachment style. Since the research was conducted in a church setting and based on attachment theory, religious and spiritual value influences can be factored in future researches.