This study of the bidirectional effects of parent-child relations, focuses on the exchange of attachment behaviors, investigating the interactions of twelve 3-member nuclear families in a strange-situation condition. Dyadic and triadic conditions involving parents with their 12-, 18-, or 24-month-old children were observed and videotaped in a waiting room setting with a habituated unfamiliar adult female used as a comparison figure. Among the major results discussed were the following: (1) children preferred to interact with either of their parents rather than with another friendly but unfamiliar adult; (2) children exhibited low frequencies of attachment behaviors, suggesting low levels of anxiety (possibly because parents had not been instructed to avoid initiating interactions but were allowed to interact naturally, and because children had become habituated in a prior session at home to the unfamiliar adult); (3) by far, the largest number of attachment exchanges was initiated by the parents rather than by the children. Four suggestions of potential benefit to future researchers were made regarding procedural issues in the study of parent-child relations. (SE)