Parents, Memories, and the Strange Lottery of Attachment
Wednesday, August 27, 2025.
You think you’re remembering a golden moment: your toddler, grinning with applesauce on their cheeks, running toward you like a drunken Olympian.
But you’re not just remembering. You’re also filtering.
And the filter was bolted into place decades ago, when you were small and depending on parents who either reliably showed up or didn’t.
A study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (Perzolli, Arcos, Kerr, Smiley, & Borelli, 2024) confirms what most therapists already suspect:
Your ability to savor joy depends on whether your caregivers were emotional first responders or checked-out absentee landlords.
Bowlby’s Old Blueprint
John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, said kids build “working models” of love based on their parents’ reliability.
Those models don’t fade. They hum along in the background, dictating how you remember your life.
Secure Attachment gives you a more balanced ledger: Mom botched the lunch pickup, but she also tucked me in at night.
Avoidant Attachment? That one could erase the whole file. Feelings? Don’t recall. And Anxious Attachment can keep you circling the same old heartbreak, like a radio stuck on static.
This study asked: how do those old scripts affect savoring—stretching out joy, slowing down long enough to actually occasionally feel good?
Toddlers, Tape Recorders, and Emotional Bread Crumbs
Here’s how they did this study. 147 mothers of toddlers were recruited for four weeks of guided memory work.
Some were nudged to recall moments of connection with their child—bedtime cuddles, first steps, tiny victories. Others were asked to recall personal joys: the rare peaceful walk, an adult dinner without cartoon mascots.
Each memory was recorded, transcribed, and scored. Coders judged for positivity (Did Mom sound warm, proud, human?) and specificity (Were there textures, colors, smells—or just “It was nice”?)
The Findings
Securely Attached mothers spoke in high definition.
Their memories had texture and emotional warmth. Dismissive-Avoidant mothers recalled the same kinds of events but flat, like a black-and-white photograph missing the faces.
Here’s what fascinated me about this study- only the Adult Attachment Interview—a deep narrative probe into childhood—predicted savoring quality.
Self-report surveys, the quick “check a box” tests, didn’t matter. Anyone can fake a form. But when you ask people to tell a story, the truth sorta leaks out.
Why This Matters
Savoring isn’t fluff.
It boosts mood, strengthens relationships, and makes parenting less like trench warfare (Burkhart, Borelli, Rasmussen, & Sbarra, 2015). I also highly suspect that savoring creates more emotional space for feelings of parental pride and awe.
But if your attachment style is dismissing, you’ll perhaps need more help: guided exercises, homework to notice joy, tools like emotion wheels to expand your vocabulary beyond the dreaded self-report of “fine.”
Ironically, insecure parents may benefit the most, because savoring invites them to build emotional muscles they’ve long neglected.
The Limits and the Larger Joke
Yes, the study leaned decidedly middle-class.
And Fathers didn’t make the cut. And yet, the bigger story remains: your past shapes the way you recall joy in the present.
Attachment isn’t fate, but it’s often the draft version. Savoring lets you to edit at the margins, underline the bright lines, and perhaps even change the ending.
In the end, savoring isn’t irrational nostalgia—it’s a often neglected tool for emotional survival.
Savoring offers way to stretch the good moments, give them weight, and remind yourself that opportunities for joy are still worth heeding.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Borelli, J. L. (2024). Relational savoring: Enhancing parental joy through positive reflection. University of California, Irvine.
Borelli, J. L., Zhou, Y., Arcos, D., & Perzolli, S. (2024). Community adaptations of savoring interventions: Lessons from diverse cultural contexts. Journal of Family Psychology.
Burkhart, M. L., Borelli, J. L., Rasmussen, H. F., & Sbarra, D. A. (2015). Savoring in insecure attachment: Emotion regulation through positive reflection. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 34(4), 299–321.
Perzolli, S., Arcos, D., Kerr, M. L., Smiley, P. A., & Borelli, J. L. (2024). Adult attachment as a predictor of savoring quality in mothers of toddlers: Results from a 4-week randomized trial. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Ansarifar, A., Perzolli, S., & Borelli, J. L. (2025). Savoring across cultures: Attachment, parenting, and positive emotion. Developmental Psychology.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent–child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.