The Role Of Attachment Style And Marital Quality In Attachment Injury Couples

The attachment system is thought to facilitate relationship goals by motivation seeking and bonding activities with significant others, particularly under times of stress (Bowlby, 1982). Attachment theory has also contributed to further understanding the marital relationship in terms of profound psychological and physiological interdependence. It is perhaps this interdependence that causes damage to the quality of attachment relationship. Hence, attachment injury is defined as “a specific incident or event in which one partner is unresponsive and inaccessible when one partner cries out for help in extreme need” (Johnson & Makinen, 2001). Therefore, marital distress or breakup in couple’s relationships does not happen suddenly, so understanding of attachment injury in relation to individual’s marital quality and attachment style would help practitioners to be equipped for appropriate and effective inventions. Further it would also help counsellors and mental health professionals to be familiar with the complexities of the topic by dealing with consequences of an attachment injury ethically and competently.  Therefore our study aimed at examining the prevalence and nature of attachment injury and its effect on marital quality, in a group of married heterosexual couples. It also attempted to associate attachment styles with and without attachment injury in couples. The study employed cross-sectional exploratory design with a set of self-administered measures. The sample comprised of 400 married individuals from urban Bangalore. Statistical results showed those individuals who were experiencing attachment injury are associated with poor marital quality. It was also seen that attachment injury was found to be associated with gender and insecure attachment style. Therefore our findings suggest that poor marital quality with insecure attachment style plays an important role in attachment injury over time. Based on the attachment style, further intervention strategies and effective programs should be designed for marital counselling. And marital enrichment programs may be useful to enhance marital quality to prevent the marital distress or breakups.

The Dynamic Analysis of Inequality of Opportunities in Pakistan

Gauging inequality of opportunity is of paramount importance for well-grounded sustainable development policy. This study develops a methodological framework to measure the attainment of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by employing topdown and bottom-up approaches of quantifying the inequality of opportunity (IOP). Moreover, the theoretical complementarity between the two approaches is also empirically established. This study conducts the dynamic analysis of IOP by using the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement dataset for the year 2001-02 to 2014-15at all tiers of government of Pakistan. Results reveal the sluggish and rutted performance on almost all the indicators of MDGs overtime and across regions. The achievement of MDGs is still a distant dream. Consequently, the adherence to The Vision 2025 seems highly implausible. The decomposition of income inequality of effort and IOP shows an overwhelming effect of circumstances which translates into the predetermined nature of each individual in Pakistan. The study suggests the reduction of education inequality and effective long-run public intervention through the provision of infrastructure as a driving force to reduce inequality of outcome as well as the opportunity.