The Del Giudice target article raises important questions about how gender may play a role in the development of attachment in middle childhood. The author rightly notes that the influence of gender has been largely ignored in the attachment literature. The proposed model generates several novel hypotheses and is likely to lead to new research. Especially intriguing is the idea that insecure attachment may be reorganized differently for boys and girls in middle childhood in support of reproductive strategies that have evolutionary advantage.

Given that attachment theory is, in large part, a theory of social influence, it is surprising that the model does not specify the impact and role of social partners during middle childhood. The model depicts an “early experience” role for parenting, in which a parent's main role is to influence the initial development of attachment. Parents are, however, still the primary attachment figures for children in middle childhood (Kerns et al. Reference Kerns, Tomich and Kim2006), which raises the question of what role they play in the proposed developmental transformation of attachment. For example, if a girl switches from an avoidant to a heightening strategy with a parent (as predicted by the model), presumably this would invoke some changes from the parent (e.g., increased rejection). The dyadic nature of parent–child relationships is not captured by the model. Relatedly, although peers play an important role in socializing gendered behaviors, very little is said regarding how peers may influence and amplify any emerging sex differentiation in attachment. Thus, while biological influences on attachment deserve greater consideration, the proposed model would be enhanced by also incorporating social influences in middle childhood.

A complexity in interpreting the model arises from the multiple meanings of the word “attachment.” Does it refer to a child's relationship with a specific target, or to a child's general orientation (style) across different attachment relationships? Both meanings are used in the target article. There has been a lack of research on how experiences in multiple attachment relationships come to be integrated into a general orientation (e.g., “state of mind”) to attachment. It is possible that this integration begins in middle childhood (Kerns et al. Reference Kerns, Schlegelmilch, Morgan, Abraham, Kerns and Richardson2005), which may have some implications for the model. Specifically, the proposed sex-specific reorganization in insecure attachments could occur within the context of specific attachments (which would produce unstable relationships) or could be reflected in a child's (emerging) attachment style. It is possible that specific attachments may be influenced primarily by patterns of interaction with a partner, whereas attachment “style” is influenced by some combination of experiences in specific relationships, gender socialization, genetic propensities in personality traits, and evolutionary pressures for adaptive mating and reproduction strategies. If the author is correct in suggesting that the proposed sex differences in attachment are in the service of reproductive strategies, then it is also possible that sex differences in insecure attachment will be most pronounced in attachments to peers that develop in late adolescence (i.e., in relationships where mating and reproduction are more relevant).

A key prediction from the model is that, in middle childhood, most insecure boys will be avoidant, and most insecure girls will be ambivalent in their attachments. The literature review on gender differences in attachment, which was based on studies using doll play interviews or questionnaires, did provide evidence for sex differences in the distributions of insecure attachment in 6- to 12-year-old children. The review could have been more extensive. There are additional studies of this age range that have employed observational measures (e.g., Graham & Easterbrooks Reference Graham and Easterbrooks2000; Moss et al. Reference Moss, Cyr and Dubois-Comtois2004) or autobiographical interviews (e.g., Ammaniti et al. Reference Ammaniti, Van IJzendoorn, Speranza and Tambelli2000; Target et al. Reference Target, Fonagy and Shmueli-Goetz2003) to assess attachment, but these studies were not included in the review. Evidence that sex differences are found using these other methods (as well as evidence for sex differences in Adult Attachment Interview [AAI] insecure classifications in adolescence) would provide stronger evidence that the pattern is not confounded with choice of methods. (Del Giudice's point about inattention to gender in the attachment literature is well taken, as most of the studies cited in this paragraph did not provide information regarding the sex breakdown within the insecure attachment groups.)

Interestingly, the review of studies also showed that many insecurely attached boys are disorganized. The author provides a cogent discussion of why insecure boys might be predisposed to adopt avoidant strategies; but why are so many boys in middle childhood disorganized in their attachments, and can this be accounted for by the model? Perhaps the model could be elaborated to identify factors in the social ecology (e.g., level of family stress) that might distinguish between boys who develop disorganized rather than avoidant attachments, but it is less clear how disorganized attachment might confer an adaptive advantage.

Despite these limitations, the article does generate many testable hypotheses, some of which are not intuitive and are not consistent with current theory. If there is a reorganization of insecure attachment in middle childhood that is not a result of changes in parenting, and an overall waning of the influence of parents, then presumably both cross-generational continuity in attachment (parent–child correspondence) and stability of child–parent attachment would be lower in middle childhood than in early childhood (although how much lower is not quite clear from the article). These corollary hypotheses are currently difficult to evaluate given the lack of relevant data (although see Target et al. [2003] for an exception). Longitudinal studies in early middle childhood are especially needed to test the hypothesis that girls and boys shift toward different insecure attachment patterns around age 7 years. Given the modest links between attachment and parenting in middle childhood (Kerns, in press), more elaborated models of the influences on attachment are needed. The model proposed by Del Giudice provides additional processes (specifically, biological mechanisms) that could be tested, as well as specifying how levels of stress may predispose girls and boys to different developmental pathways.