The book already mentioned that there was a correlation between categories of attachment in children, and economic background. I think that the largest influence in a child's development (and further success) would be the caregiver's ability to provide a child with the opportunity to achieve higher education and an environment secure from negative influences. Not all lower-income are able to do this, which may skew the results.
To actually find a causal relationship (or even a meaningful correlation) researchers would have to follow several children over many years. The children would also have to be of similar economic background, and have a similar home/family life. Finding a large enough data set would be very difficult and impractical.
I agree with your post. I believe that socioeconomic background plays a huge part in the child's ability to form secure attachments, not only because of their ability to provide higher education, but also because a caregiver who is adequately satisfied themselves will be more likely to provide a child with the attention and love it needs to form a secure attachment. I do agree that the many other factors influencing a child's development would make it difficult to find a set of data that fit all the requirements.
I also agree with your post. Economic factors have a massive influence on healthy attachment, and subsequently a child's well-being as they develop. I would speculate, however, that external economic factors are less influential when a caregiver, who had a stable economic environment and secure attachment as a child, grows up to have a less stable economic environment. I believe that this caregiver would be likely to form a secure attachment with his/her children despite his/her economic situation.
I agree that socioeconomic background probably has some influence on a child's attachment. I would like to know exactly how the proportions of children with different types of attachment change for lower-income families (rather than simply knowing the proportion of "securely attached" children was lower) in order to have some indication of how much socioeconomic background influences attachment. I also think that the above post bring up a very good point and a study of such families would be very interesting.
I agree that socioeconomic background has some influence on well-being later in life. However, there are many people who live in an environment secure from negative influences and are unhappy later in life. Because of this, there is probably a moderately strong, positive correlation between economic background and well-being. Moreover, establishing a causal relationship between these two variables would be difficult due to ethical considerations, not a difficulty in obtaining a large enough sample size. To establish causation, children would need to be randomly assigned to the experimental group which involves consigning them to a particular economic background. Even an experiment such as this would be subject to multiple confounding variables.
