Intergenerational transmission of attachment was often documented as the link between mothers’ representations of attachment and children’s attachment behaviors, but the evidence linking mothers’ and children’s representations of attachment was scarce. At the same time, the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of attachment for children older than one or two years of age remained unclear. The first purpose of this study was to show a link between mothers’ and children’s script-like representations of attachment, or secure base scripts. The second one was to examine mother-child dialogue about emotions as a possible mediator involved in the intergenerational transmission of attachment representations.

Fifty nine children recruited from preschools in Bucharest, Romania (mean age 4.5 years, 33 boys) completed a shortened version of the Story Stem Completion Task (Bretherton et al., 1990). The narratives were transcribed and coded by two independent scorers on a 1 to 4 scriptedness scale, depending on how much they resembled a prototypical secure base script. Children’s mothers were assessed with the Attachment Script Assessment (H. Waters & Rodrigues, 2001). Their narratives were scored on a 1 to 7 scriptedness scale. Additionally, mothers and children were invited to discuss together how the child would feel in six hypothetical situations meant to elicit positive or negative emotions. Mothers’ contributions to these conversations were scored on three maternal Co-Construction Scales.

As predicted, children of mothers with secure base scripts were significantly more likely to have secure base scripts themselves, (χ² (Yates-corrected) = 8.08, p < .01), resulting in an overall hit rate of 69%. The correlation between mothers’ and children’s scriptedness was significant at r = .26, p < .05. The correlation between mothers’ and children’s scriptedness was significant at r = .26, p < .05. There were significant associations between mothers’ scriptedness and mothers’ co-construction scales (r = .26, p < .05), and between mothers’ co-construction scales and children’s scriptedness (r = .53, p < .01). A series of regression analyses were consistent with the mediation hypothesis. There were no differences in verbal IQ between children with and without knowledge of secure base scripts and mothers’ co-construction skills were the stronger predictor of children’s scriptedness. The results are discussed in the context of attachment theory and the proposed mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of attachment.