Death Awareness, Maternal Separation Anxiety, and Attachment Style Among First-Time Mothers—A Terror Management Perspective

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Death Awareness, MaternalSeparation Anxiety, andAttachment Style AmongFirst-Time Mothers—A TerrorManagement PerspectiveOrit Taubman–Ben-Ari a & Liat Katz–Ben-Ami aa School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University , RamatGan, IsraelPublished online: 29 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Orit Taubman–Ben-Ari & Liat Katz–Ben-Ami (2008) DeathAwareness, Maternal Separation Anxiety, and Attachment Style Among First-TimeMothers—A Terror Management Perspective, Death Studies, 32:8, 737-756, DOI:10.1080/07481180802289622

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DEATH AWARENESS, MATERNAL SEPARATIONANXIETY, AND ATTACHMENT STYLE AMONG

FIRST-TIME MOTHERS—A TERROR MANAGEMENTPERSPECTIVE

ORIT TAUBMAN–BEN-ARI and LIAT KATZ–BEN-AMI

School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Two studies explored the interplay between death awareness, attachment style, andmaternal separation anxiety among first-time mothers of infants aged 3–12 months.In Study 1 (N ¼ 60), a higher accessibility of death-related thoughts was foundfollowing induction of thoughts about separation from the infant. In Study 2(N ¼ 100), a mortality salience induction led to higher maternal separation anxi-ety. Contrary to expectations, these findings were not moderated by mother’s attach-ment style. The results are explained in terms of Terror Management Theory, anddemonstrate its applicability to maternal emotions and cognitions.

Mothers’ separation from their babies has been addressed in theliterature mainly in terms of its effect on the infants, with less atten-tion paid to the impact on mothers themselves. It is only logical toassume, however, that the degree to which separation from herinfant generates difficulties and anxieties for the mother may influ-ence her maternal behavior and, in turn, her infant’s emotionaldevelopment. Maternal separation anxiety has been shown to beassociated with a number of relevant variables, including attach-ment style (Lutz & Hock, 1995; Mayseless & Scher, 2000), self-esteem (Hock & Shirtzinger, 1992; McBride & Belsky, 1988),mothers’ perceptions of their own mothers (Lutz & Hock, 1995;Scher, Hershkovitz, & Harel, 1998), and infant characteristics(Diener & Kim, 2004; Scher et al., 1998). No previous studies,

Received 10 May 2007; accepted 9 October 2007.This research was conducted as a part of the M.A. dissertation carried out at the School

of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, by Liat Katz–Ben-Ami, under the supervision of OritTaubman–Ben-Ari.

Address correspondence to Orit Taubman–Ben-Ari, School of Social Work, Bar-IlanUniversity, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]

737

Death Studies, 32: 737–756, 2008Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0748-1187 print/1091-7683 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07481180802289622

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however, have attempted to relate it to another basic humanconcern, namely fear of one’s own death.

The current study sought to examine maternal separationanxiety among first-time mothers from the standpoint of TerrorManagement Theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon,1997; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2002). TMT focuses onthe psychological mechanisms typically used to buffer the anxietyderiving from the awareness of one’s own death. Research hasshown that cultural worldview and self-esteem serve an anxiety-buffering function, and that death reminders increase the salienceof these two defense mechanisms (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990;Harmon-Jones et al., 1997). Moreover, recent empirical studieshighlight two new avenues in TMT research: the roles played inmanaging the existential terror of death by close relationships(Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003) and by the desire foroffspring (Wisman & Goldenberg, 2005). If a close relationshipand having children serve to shield the individual from the terrorof death, then thoughts about separation from a child, especially ayoung baby, would be expected to elevate death awareness. By thesame token, thoughts about death could engender higher sepa-ration anxiety. We sought to investigate these possibilities in twoexperimental studies conducted on new first-time mothers. Atthe same time, we examined the role that attachment anxietyand avoidance might play in the relationship between deathawareness and maternal separation anxiety.

Maternal Separation Anxiety

Separation from significant others may be perceived as an eventthat arouses a variety of feelings and is typically accompanied bysorrow and psychological pain (Bowlby, 1973). In addition, experi-ences of separation from early childhood, beginning with the lossof serenity and security characteristic of life in the womb (Rank,1929), followed by the infant being taken from its parents’ arms,give rise to death awareness (McCarthy, 1980). In other words,separation from the mother is a fundamental basis for death anxi-ety, which is formed in early life and then manifested throughoutthe lifespan. From the perspective of the mother, the experienceof giving birth fans death anxiety (Deutsch, 1945; Westbrook,1978), which is associated with other anxieties, such as losing the

738 O. Taubman–Ben-Ari and L. Katz–Ben-Ami

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fetus, or even losing parts of the self that existed prior to the preg-nancy (Deutsch, 1945). Furthermore, a parent’s narcissistic needsare met and enhanced by perceiving the infant as part of the par-ent’s self-object. A sense of failure in parenthood might thereforelead to feelings of emptiness, worthlessness, and helplessness(Kohut, 1971), so that separation from the infant might again beexperienced as the loss of part of the self, engendering feelingsof anxiety and lower self-esteem. The sense of losing part of the selfis further heightened by the baby’s need for individuation (Mahler,Pine, & Bergman, 1970). This is even stronger in the case of a firstchild, as the initial transition to parenthood represents an unfam-iliar and sometimes ambiguous situation (Feldman, 1987). Themother’s lack of experience in caring for an infant might raise anxi-eties, undermine her self-confidence, and adversely affect parentalfunctioning (Entwisle & Doering, 1981). Separation from the babymight also contribute to a sense of the loss of self-worth and mean-ing in life, as these can be ‘‘earned’’ symbolically through the child(Wisman & Goldenberg, 2005).

According to Bowlby (1969, 1973), because of a mother’sinstinctual inclination to protect her young, she suffers anxietywhen separation from the child interferes with her ability to pro-vide protection, security, and comfort. Maternal separation anxiety,defined as an unpleasant emotional state that may be manifestedin expressions of worry, sadness, or guilt (Hock, Gnezda, &McBride, 1983), thus represents the extent to which the motherexperiences separation from her infant as a threat to the child’swell-being and=or her own psychological equilibrium (Hock,McBride, & Gnezda, 1989). Separation anxiety has been identifiedas an important psychological construct shaping maternal behavior(Hock et al., 1989; Hock & Schirtzinger, 1992). Difficulties withseparation are seen as particularly salient for the mother–childdyad, and presumed to be reflected in problems with interpersonaldifferentiation, distancing, and boundary formation for bothmother and child (Hock & Schirtzinger, 1989).

The level of maternal separation anxiety is typically describedin terms of three components: mother’s distress at being away fromher infant; perception of her child’s distress as a result of theseparation; and concern about the adequacy of the alternativecaretaker (Hock et al., 1989). Individual differences have beenassociated with a variety of maternal behaviors and attributes.

Terror Management and Maternal Separation Anxiety 739

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High levels of maternal separation anxiety, for example, have beenfound to be related to higher depressive symptomatology (Hock &DeMeis, 1990), lower levels of self-esteem, more negative repre-sentations of self (McBride & Belsky, 1988), and overprotectiveand insensitive behaviors (Stifter, Coulean, & Fish, 1993). Sepa-ration anxiety has also been associated with healthy mother–childrelationships, with mothers reporting moderate levels of anxietybeing more likely to have securely attached infants (McBride &Belsky, 1988).

Attachment Style

One determinant of the level of maternal separation anxiety maybe the mother’s internal working model or attachment style(Mayseless & Scher, 2000). Attachment style refers to affect regu-lation mechanisms and internalized beliefs regarding closerelationships (Bowlby, 1969; Mikulincer, Shaver, & Pereg, 2003),including beliefs about one’s own worth, whether one can trustothers, and so on. Bowlby (1988) claimed that the successful per-formance of affect regulation functions in childhood results in asense of attachment security—the feeling that the world is a safeplace, that one can rely on protective others, and that one can there-fore confidently explore the environment and engage effectivelywith other people (Mikulincer et al., 2003). In other words, securityin attachment is an inner resource that may help the individual tocope and adjust to stressful events (Mikulincer & Florian, 1998).

In examining this notion, most studies have used Hazan andShaver’s (1987) typology of secure, avoidant, and anxious–ambiva-lent attachment styles. More recently, Brennan, Clark, and Shaver(1998) have argued that this typology reflects two basic dimen-sions: avoidance and anxiety. Persons scoring low on the twodimensions exhibit the secure style and are characterized by asense of comfort with closeness, interdependence, reliance on sup-port seeking, and other constructive means of coping with stress.Individuals scoring high on avoidance are characterized by a dis-trust of others’ goodwill and a preference for emotional distancefrom others, relying mostly on themselves and failing to use prox-imity seeking to relieve distress. Those scoring high on anxiety dis-play a strong need for closeness combined with an overwhelmingfear of rejection; they tend to ruminate mentally on their emotional


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state and rely on emotion-focused coping strategies. Moreover,those high on either anxiety or avoidance are likely to appraisestressful events in negative terms, and to report high levels of dis-tress (Fraley & Shaver, 1997; Kobak, Cole, Ferenz, & Fleming,1993; Mikulincer, Florian, & Tolmacz, 1990).

Such general beliefs about the availability or trustworthinessof others may also affect maternal separation anxiety. For example,a mother who has doubts about the trustworthiness of others maybe reluctant to leave her infant with other caregivers and mayreport high maternal separation anxiety (Mayseless & Scher,2000). Indeed, insecurely attached mothers have been found tohave higher levels of maternal separation anxiety than thosesecurely attached (Lutz & Hock, 1995; Scher et al., 1998). Inaddition, mothers’ fear of abandonment has been shown to berelated to the assignment of limited developmental goals for theirbabies, and their fear of closeness to greater maternal separationanxiety (Scher & Mayseless, 1994). Moreover, when controllingfor maternal separation concerns at 3 months of baby age,mothers’ fear of being dependent (indicative of an avoidantstyle) was related to increased anxiety at 9 months of baby’s age(Mayseless & Scher, 2000), whereas secure mothers showed adecrease in anxiety level at 12 months (Scher et al., 1998). Thoughstudies such as these have explored the connection betweenmaternal separation anxiety and various personal variables, noprior investigation has sought to examine how it relates to otherbasic human anxieties, such as the fear of death.

TMT

Though the fear of death is a complex concept, comprised ofa broad range of death attitudes (for a review see Neimeyer,Wittkowski, & Moser, 2004), TMT (Greenberg et al., 1997;Pyszczynski et al., 2002) focuses of the fear of one’s own deathand states that awareness of one’s own finitude is a fundamentalsource of anxiety. To avoid the feelings of helplessness and terroraroused by the knowledge of the inevitability of death, humanbeings have developed psychological mechanisms that helpeliminate such thoughts from their consciousness. These symbolicdefenses have been conceptualized as a dual-process model ofproximal and distal defenses (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon,


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1999), whereby proximal defenses consist of attempts to suppressthoughts of death, whereas distal defenses address the issue ofdeath in a symbolic manner by modifying perceptions of the selfand the world. Most of the empirical work on TMT thus far hasfocused on two types of distal defenses. In the first, cognitive andbehavioral efforts are aimed at validating one’s cultural worldview,thereby providing a set of standards for values and behavior, aswell as a promise of transcending death (Greenberg et al., 1997).In the second, such efforts are aimed at increasing self-esteem byliving up to the standards prescribed by the culture.

Accordingly, TMT has given rise to the mortality saliencehypothesis (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1997), which holds that individualsexposed to reminders of death react positively to ideas and peoplethat support and validate their cultural worldview, and negativelyto ideas and people that deviate from it. Moreover, mortality sal-ience is expected to lead to cognitive and behavioral efforts aimedat maintaining or enhancing self-esteem. This hypothesis hasreceived extensive empirical support (for a review, see Pyszczynskiet al., 2002).

It has recently been suggested that close relationships mayalso serve the terror management function of buffering the terrorof death (Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003). A series ofstudies has shown death reminders to lead to a higher desire forintimacy in romantic relationships (Mikulincer & Florian, 2000),greater willingness to initiate social interactions, lower rejectionsensitivity, and more positive appraisals of interpersonal com-petence (Taubman–Ben-Ari, Findler, & Mikulincer, 2002). Theseeffects were found mainly among securely attached individuals.Moreover, thoughts about sustained or irreversible separationfrom a close partner led to a higher accessibility of death-relatedthoughts than thoughts about other kinds of separation, parti-cularly among persons scoring high on attachment anxiety(Mikulincer, Florian, Birnbaum, & Malishkovitz, 2002). In additionto underlining the importance of attachment styles, these studiessuggest that a mortality salience induction might prompt indivi-duals to seek proximity in a wide range of interpersonal situations.Furthermore, they indicate that thoughts of long-term separationissues might elicit more death-related thoughts.

Another idea that has been examined lately is that mortalityreminders may influence the desire to produce offspring, as having


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children can contribute to a sense of immortality and fortify theperception of meaning and self-worth (Wisman & Goldenberg,2005). Such findings are further indications of the role of childrenin shielding against the terror of death.

The Current Research

In view of the connection between the fear of separation from theinfant and death anxiety, we chose to explore whether the twoconcepts are interrelated, so that thinking of one would resultin heightened levels of the other. Using the theoretical frameworkof TMT, we examined both the effects of reminders of separationfrom the infant on the accessibility of thoughts of death (Study 1),and the effect of reminders of death on maternal separation anxi-ety (Study 2), among first-time mothers of infants aged 3–12months. It was predicted that thinking of separation from thebaby would be related to higher death thought accessibility andthat mortality salience would lead to higher maternal separationanxiety than control conditions. We further hypothesized thatthese effects would be especially salient for higher attachmentinsecure (anxious or avoidant) individuals, as people high onthese dimensions can be expected to regulate stress in a lesseffective way.

Study 1

Study 1 examined the hypothesis that thinking of separationfrom the infant would lead to heightened death thought accessi-bility among first-time mothers, and explored the potential med-iating role of mother’s attachment style. Mothers were dividedinto an experimental condition, in which they were asked toimagine separation from their baby, and a control condition,in which they were asked to think about a neutral theme (TVviewing habits). Death-thought accessibility was assessed by thenumber of death-related words that participants used on a wordcompletion task. It was predicted that thoughts of separationfrom the baby would lead to the completion of more death-related words than in the control condition, and that this effectwould be stronger for mothers high on attachment anxiety oravoidance.


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Method

PARTICIPANTS

Sixty first-time mothers of babies aged 3–12 months (M ¼ 7.41,SD ¼ 2.81) volunteered to take part in the study. The women ran-ged in age from 22 to 42 (M ¼ 28.47, SD ¼ 3.54), and most werecollege students or had an academic degree (85%). They wererandomly divided into the two experimental conditions, with 30participants in each group.

MATERIALS

Participants were asked to complete the following self-reportmeasures. All materials were administrated in Hebrew after theywere translated forth and back from English, and their use amongthe Israeli population was validated in previous studies, asmentioned specifically when relating to each measure.

WORD COMPLETION TASK

To tap the accessibility of death-related thoughts, the authorsused the Hebrew version of a word completion task that has pre-viously been used successfully in English on American samplesby Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, and Breus (1994)and in Hebrew on Israeli samples by Mikulincer et al. (2002).The instrument contains 19 Hebrew word fragments that parti-cipants complete with the first word that comes to their mind byadding one letter. Eight of the 19 Hebrew fragments can be com-pleted with either neutral or death-related words, and the remain-ing 11 can only be completed with neutral words. The possibledeath-related words in Hebrew are death, mourning, bereavement,cadaver, grave, killing, dying, and skeleton. Scores were assignedaccording to the number of death-related words used by a partici-pant to complete the fragments, and could therefore range from 0to 8.

EXPERIENCES IN CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS SCALE (ECR; BRENNAN ET AL., 1998)

This is a self-report scale consisting of 36 items tapping thedimensions of attachment anxiety and avoidance and used toassess attachment style. Participants rated the extent to which eachitem was descriptive of their feelings in close relationships on a7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Eighteen


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items tap attachment anxiety (e.g., ‘‘I worry about being aban-doned’’; ‘‘I worry a lot about my relationships’’) and 18 tap attach-ment avoidance (e.g., ‘‘I prefer not to show a partner how I feeldeep down’’; ‘‘I get uncomfortable when a romantic partner wantsto be very close’’). The reliability and validity of the scale have pre-viously been demonstrated (Brennan et al., 1998). The ECR wastranslated into Hebrew by Mikulincer and Florian (2000), who alsovalidated its two-factor structure in an Israeli sample. In the currentsample, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were high both for the anxi-ety items (.87) and the avoidance items (.91). Accordingly, scoreswere computed for each of the subscales by averaging the parti-cipant’s responses on the relevant 18 items.

PROCEDURE

Participants were recruited through various mother–infantcourses and through mother and child health clinics. The question-naires were administered in the participants’ homes. They wereinformed that the study was investigating the mother–child relation-ship to gain understanding of various aspects of the emotions andattitudes of first-time mothers. The respondents were promised anon-ymity and confidentiality and were given a sealed envelope in whichto place their completed questionnaires, all of which were presentedin Hebrew. The entire procedure took about 10–15 minutes.

Following the general instructions, each participant was ran-domly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions. In theseparation condition, they received written instructions asking themto (a) imagine separation from their baby and describe the thoughtsand feelings that this image arouses in them; and (b) describe howthey feel about such a situation. In the control condition they wereinstructed to imagine a favorite TV show and describe it and the feel-ings aroused when they thought about it. The participants were thenpresented with the word completion task, followed by a distraction–delay task (a questionnaire relating to leisure activities) and the ECR.Finally, they completed a short background questionnaire regardingage, education, and baby’s exact age.

Results

A three-step hierarchical regression for death-related words wasconducted to examine the unique effects of the experimental


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conditions and attachment anxiety, and the interaction betweenthem. In Step 1, the demographic variables (mother’s age andinfant’s age) were entered using a stepwise model. In Step 2, thestudy conditions (a dummy variable contrasting the separationfrom infant condition and the control condition) and the attach-ment anxiety and avoidance scores were entered as the predictors.In Step 3, the two-way interactive terms (Condition�AttachmentAnxiety, Condition�Attachment Avoidance, AttachmentAvoidance�Attachment Anxiety) were added.

The regression revealed that none of the demographic vari-ables contributed significantly to mother’s completion of death-related words in Step 1. Furthermore, the main effect for conditionwas significant in Step 2 (b ¼� .30, t(59) ¼ 2.21, p < .05), with ahigher number of death-related words in the separation conditionthan in the control condition (M ¼ .83, SD ¼ .83; M ¼ .40,SD ¼ .50, respectively). However, neither the main effects forattachment anxiety or avoidance nor the interactions betweencondition and attachment anxiety or avoidance were found to besignificant.

Thus, as predicted, the results of Study 1 indicate that thinkingof separation from her baby leads to higher death-thought accessi-bility for the mother. However, this association did not prove to bedependent on the mother’s attachment style.

Study 2

Study 2 examined the hypothesis that mortality salience wouldaffect the level of maternal separation anxiety among first-timemothers, and again explored the moderating effect of attachmentstyle. Here mothers were divided into a mortality salience con-dition, in which they were exposed to a mortality salience induc-tion, and a control condition, in which they were asked to thinkabout a neutral theme (TV viewing habits). It was predicted thatfollowing reminders of death, higher separation anxiety wouldbe reported, and that this effect would emerge mainly amongwomen with high levels of attachment anxiety or avoidance.

In order to examine whether the expected effects of attach-ment are unique or might be explained by another relevant con-struct, we requested thatparticipants complete a self-report scaletapping global self-esteem. In fact, TMT studies have consistently


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shown that self-esteem seems to moderate the activation ofworldview defenses following mortality salience induction (e.g.,Harmon-Jones et al., 1997).

Method

PARTICIPANTS

One-hundred first-time mothers of babies aged 3–12 months(M ¼ 7.60, SD ¼ 2.99) volunteered to take part in the study. Thewomen ranged in age from 21 to 42 (M ¼ 28.51, SD ¼ 3.83), andmost were college students or had an academic degree (87%).They were randomly divided into the two experimentalconditions, with 50 participants in each group.

MATERIALS

Participants were asked to complete the following self-reportmeasures. All materials were administrated in Hebrew after theywere translated back and forth from English, and their use amongthe Israeli population was validated in previous studies, as men-tioned specifically when relating to each measure.

The Hebrew version of Rosenberg’s (1979) Self-Esteem Scale,which consists of 10 items rated on a 4-point scale from 1 (stronglydisagree) to 4 (strongly agree), was used. Hobfoll and Walfish (1984)translated this scale into Hebrew, and reported an internal consis-tency of Cronbach’s a ¼ .95. As Cronbach’s a for the 10 items wasreasonable in the current sample (.79), we assigned each partici-pant a self-esteem score by averaging her responses on all items,with higher scores indicating more positive self-esteem.

MORTALITY SALIENCE INDUCTION

Two open-ended questions that served to remind participantsof their own death (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990) were asked:‘‘Please describe briefly the emotions that the thought of yourown death arouses in you,’’ and ‘‘What do you think happens toyou as you die and once you are dead?’’ In the control condition,the questions related to television viewing. The questionnaires inboth conditions had the same format, consisting of two items,phrased similarly, with space provided for a response of approxi-mately one paragraph in length for each item. This inductionyielded mortality salience effects in several previous studies (e.g.,


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Taubman–Ben-Ari, 2004; Taubman–Ben-Ari et al., 2002).Responses were not scored, but rather served to prime thoughtsof either death or a neutral topic.

Following the mortality salience manipulation, the parti-cipants in both groups completed a 20-item filler-distracting scaleon leisure time activities. This scale was included because researchhas shown that in order to produce increased distal defense, indi-viduals must first be distracted from mortality salience (Greenberget al., 1997; Pyszczynski et al., 1999).

We also used the Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale (Hocket al., 1983), a self-administered questionnaire designed to assessmaternal separation anxiety (in relation to the child), which wastranslated into Hebrew by Mayseless and Scher (2000). The orig-inal instrument contains 35 items on three independent subscalesthat focus on different aspects of maternal separation anxiety. Inthe present study, we followed the suggestion of Hock et al.(1989) and used only the Maternal Separation Anxiety subscale,which consists of 21 items representing the levels of anxiety, sad-ness, and guilt experienced by the mother when separated fromher infant (e.g., ‘‘I don’t enjoy myself when I am away from mychild’’). Responses are indicated on a 5-point Likert scale rangingfrom 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). As Cronbach’s a for the21 items was high in the current sample (.89), scores were calcu-lated for each participant by averaging her responses on all items,with higher scores indicating higher maternal separation anxiety.

ECR (Brennan et al., 1998) was used to assess attachment style(see Study 1). In the current sample, a ¼ .89 for attachment avoid-ance and .88 for attachment anxiety.

PROCEDURE

The procedure was identical to that used in Study 1, save forthe instruments. Following the general instructions, all the parti-cipants completed the Self-Esteem Scale. They were then ran-domly assigned to one of the two groups and were presentedwith either the mortality salience or the control questionnaire, fol-lowed by the filler distracting scale. They next completed theMaternal Separation Anxiety Scale, a distraction-delay task, andthe ECR, in that order. Finally, the participants were asked to com-plete a short background questionnaire regarding age, education,and baby’s exact age.


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Results

A 3-step hierarchical regression was conducted on the maternalseparation anxiety score. In Step 1, the demographic variables(mother’s age and infant’s age) were entered using a stepwisemodel. Step 2 examined the experimental condition (a dummyvariable contrasting the mortality salience condition and the con-trol condition), and the effects of attachment anxiety and avoid-ance. In Step 3, the interactions between attachment anxiety,attachment avoidance, and the experimental condition wereadded.

The analysis revealed that none of the demographic variablescontributed significantly to mother’s separation anxiety in Step 1 ofthe regression. In Step 2, the experimental condition, b ¼�.23,t(99) ¼ 2.35, p < .05, yielded a significant unique contribution:higher maternal separation anxiety was found in the mortality sal-ience condition than the control condition (M ¼ 3.16, SD ¼ .53;M ¼ 2.94, SD ¼ .43, respectively). A significant unique contri-bution was also found for attachment avoidance, b ¼ .25,t(99) ¼ 2.66, p < .01: the higher the level of attachment avoidance,the higher the mother’s separation anxiety. The interactions inStep 3 were not significant.

The inclusion of the self-esteem score as an independent vari-able in the second step of the regression did not contribute signifi-cantly to maternal separation anxiety, nor did it alter the significantmain effects for condition and attachment avoidance. In addition,it did not yield a significant interaction with mortality salience.

Thus, as expected, after the mortality salience induction, parti-cipants reported higher levels of maternal separation anxiety thanafter the neutral induction. Although this effect was not moderatedby attachment anxiety or avoidance, attachment avoidance byitself was associated with higher maternal separation anxiety.

Discussion

Although the transition to motherhood is considered a major lifeevent that arouses joy and a sense of fulfillment and challenge, itmay also be a stressful experience, generating anxiety and feelingsof incompetence and interpersonal loneliness, as well as a sense ofloss in terms of autonomy, time, appearance, and occupational


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identity (e.g., Nicolson, 1999). The current studies examined theassociations between death awareness, maternal separation anxi-ety, and attachment style. On the basis of TMT, we hypothesizedthat reminders of separation from the baby would engender higherdeath-thought accessibility, and that reminders of death wouldelevate the level of separation anxiety among first time mothersof young babies. Furthermore, we expected these effects to occurmainly among insecurely attached mothers, as their emotionalregulation system has been found to be less effective.

The two experiments found partial support for these hypoth-eses, showing that mothers who thought about separation fromtheir babies completed more death-related words, and thatmothers who thought about their own mortality reported higherseparation anxiety than mothers in the control conditions. How-ever, contrary to expectations, insecurely attached mothers werenot found to be more affected by these manipulations. The exam-ination of another personal resource (i.e., self-esteem) did not alterthese results, and therefore did not provide an alternative expla-nation for the findings.

These findings lend further credence to the approach of TMT.First, according to TMT people can obtain a sense of immortalityby feeling that they are living up to the standards of their culturalworldview. Though in modern Western society, more and moremothers are concerned with actualizing themselves through a suc-cessful career, women are still expected to be the primary care-givers for their children. Thus, thoughts of separation from thebaby might undermine their perception of their cultural role asmothers, as well as their sense of immortality, leading to moredeath-related thoughts. In the same way, thinking about deathmight generate the need to validate their cultural worldview, thusintensifying fears of being separated from the baby. Secondly,given the terror management function of close relationships,thoughts about death engender the need for closeness (e.g.,Taubman–Ben-Ari et al., 2002), whereas thoughts about separationelevate death-thought accessibility (Mikulincer et al., 2002). Think-ing about separation from their babies might therefore threatenmothers’ symbiotic fantasies of a perfect relationship with them,whereas being forced to think about death might weaken the abil-ity of this relationship to serve as a buffer against such thoughts.The current findings thus provide further evidence of the role of


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close relationships in managing existential terror, demonstratingthat this function can be performed specifically by the mother–child dyad.

The findings might also be explained in psychoanalyticalterms, whereby the connection between separation and death iswell established at the very beginning of life: separation of the babyfrom the mother at birth denies him=her the security experienced inthe womb. In further developmental phases, repeated separationsfrom the mother engender unavoidable anxiety, as separationcomes to symbolize vulnerability and potential danger for the child(Bowlby, 1973). Hence, experiences of separation become uncon-sciously connected with finitude or death. Moreover, Deutsch con-tended that the birth of a child awakens a woman’s fear of death,and that after giving birth, this existential fear is replaced by otheranxieties, such as separation anxiety (Deutsch, 1945). Though thisidea was proposed as far back as 1945, our research appears to pro-vide some of the first empirical evidence of the interplay betweenfears of death and separation in the transition to motherhood.

The finding that higher attachment avoidance is associatedwith higher separation anxiety is in line with previous studies thatindicate that women with insecure attachment representations aremore likely to have heightened levels of maternal separation anxi-ety than those with secure attachment representations. In otherwords, the extent to which a mother is able to integrate relation-ship information and experiences, as reflected in an overall rep-resentation of attachment relationships, may influence her abilityto regulate closeness and separation in her relationship with herinfant (Lutz & Hock, 1995).

Nevertheless, no moderating effects of attachment anxiety oravoidance were found in either of the current studies, though pre-vious research has related attachment styles to reactions to mortalitysalience, showing that securely attached individuals were moreimmune to the effects of death reminders (Mikulincer, Florian, &Hirschberger, 2003). Those studies, however, did not deal withnew mothers. It is possible that in the primary phase of mother-hood, the awakening of the two existential anxieties is hard for allmothers to regulate and cope with, whatever their attachment style.It would be interesting to re-examine the role of attachment styles inlater developmental stages when the initial separation anxiety anddeath anxiety aroused by the birth may have become attenuated.


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This possibility is consistent with the idea that during the firstyear of motherhood, a woman must integrate this new identity intoher self, constructing a new sense of who she is. During this vulner-able stage of identity re-formation, every threat leaves her withhigher anxieties, weaker ego-defenses, and lower abilities to copeeffectively (Feldman, 1987; Feldman, Biringen, & Nash, 1981;Mercer, 1985). It is also compatible with the finding that at 3months of infant age, no differences were found between anxiousattachment and secure attachment mothers in their level of sepa-ration anxiety from the baby, whereas when the baby was one yearold, anxiously attached mothers reported higher separation anxi-ety than the securely attached (Scher et al., 1998). These resultssuggest that maternal separation anxiety is dependent on bothmother’s and baby’s developmental stage and call for longitudinalevaluations of this phenomenon.

Several limitations of the current investigation should benoted. First, as mentioned above, we concentrated on mothers ofbabies 3–12 months old. Future studies should widen this scopeand include mothers of children at different ages to understandthe dynamic and developmental aspects of the interplay betweenseparation anxiety, death anxiety, and attachment style. Secondly,we focused on maternal separation anxiety. However, the role ofadditional aspects of motherhood, such as the conflict betweencareer and motherhood, and different contributors, such as themother’s relationship with her spouse or own mother, also warrantinvestigation. Thirdly, we measured attachment styles by means ofthe ECR (Brennan et al., 1998), which is frequently used and hasdisplayed good psychometric qualities. Nevertheless, to the bestof our knowledge, previous studies on maternal separation anxietyand attachment have used other measures, such as the AdultAttachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1996). Future stu-dies might therefore attempt to replicate our results using differentinstruments. In addition, they may focus on attachment in relationto parents rather than in relation to romantic partners, and alsoexamine individual differences in caregiving as it relates to attach-ment styles. Fourthly, most of our participants had an academiceducation. Future studies should attempt to recruit mothers ofmore varied backgrounds to strengthen the external validity ofthe current findings. Finally, as the concept of the fear of deathis considered multidimensional in nature, and as the experience


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being studied is the birth of a first child, use of a multidimensionalassessment of death concern could clarify the nature of the deathanxiety aroused, whether for oneself or another (especially thebaby).

Despite these limitations, the current research provides novelevidence regarding the associations between death concerns andmaternal separation anxiety, and points to the relevance of TMTin the context of the mother–child relationship. Moreover, becausethe results of the two studies are validated by each other, they seemto be especially trustworthy. Beyond these theoretical merits, it haspractical implications as well. Therapists should be aware of theinterplay between separation from the baby and death anxiety asthey treat new mothers and their families. Enhancing mothers’awareness of their own feelings may make them more consciousof these concerns and help them balance their maternal identitywith other components of the feminine identity, as well as differen-tiate between their own feelings and the baby’s need for individua-tion and separation. In addition, when babies require treatment inhospitals or other medical settings, mothers should be allowed, notto say encouraged, to be involved in the process and remain besidetheir children. This involvement might lower maternal anxieties,including death anxiety, and bolster the mother’s capacity to copewith the stress, while at the same time promoting the baby’s copingabilities and recuperation. These practical implications might be ela-borated through future research, which could provide a more com-prehensive picture of the reaction to separation from the baby. Theultimate aim would be to help the mother feel confident and becomfortable with closeness, yet handle separation issues in such away as to allow the healthy autonomy of herself and her child. Acapacity for separation would enable her both to value and to fosterthe child’s development toward ever-increasing degrees of separation.

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Documents

Death Awareness, Maternal Separation Anxiety, and Attachment Style Among First-Time Mothers—A Terror Management Perspective