Earned security
Secure functioning in an adult whose early attachment experiences were difficult, shown by a coherent, balanced account of that history.
What drives it
Shows that the working model can be revised, usually through a reliable partner, mentor, therapist or sustained reflection. Useful for identification because the coherence of the story predicts better than what happened in it.
How it shows
Work
Can describe a hard upbringing plainly, without drama or dismissal ("My father was frightening; I learned to read rooms early, and I watch that I don't over-read them now"). Under heavy pressure old patterns flicker and then get caught.
Relationships
Usually names at least one corrective relationship. Parents differently from how they were parented, on purpose, and can say where they slip.
Self
You can tell your childhood story with specifics and feeling and some understanding of your parents, without the narrative collapsing into anger or vagueness.
What tells it apart
Dismissive-avoidant attachment: Dismissing people also say they are over their childhood, but with thin memories and idealisation ("normal, fine"); earned-secure people give concrete, sometimes painful detail with balance.
Spiritual bypassing: Bypassing claims resolution in transcendent language and skips the specifics; earned security gives specifics and still names the hurt.
Secure attachment: Behaviour now is the same; the difference lies in the history and in the visible work done on it.
A test
Ask the person for five words describing a parent and a memory backing each; specific, balanced, coherent answers point to earned security.
Questions to carry
- When they describe a parent, how specific and even-handed are the memories behind each word they choose?
- Which relationship in my adult life changed what I expect from people, and how did it change it?
How strong the research is
moderate. Prospectively identified earned-secure adults function much like continuously secure ones; retrospective classifications may partly reflect current mood colouring memory (Roisman and colleagues, 2002).
Where it comes from
Mary Main and Ruth Goldwyn, Adult Attachment Interview coding, 1980s; Jessica Pearson, Deborah Cohn, Philip Cowan and Carolyn Cowan, 1994
On the family tree: Mary Main