The major social issue developed in Attachments is the need for a woman to have a meaningful life of her own.

Attachments addresses the sexual revolution of the 1970s, presenting it in relatively negative terms as having assumed too much importance. In describing her sexual fumbling with Schlomo in college, for example, Nadine is pleased with their lack of anxiety over their performance, free of "that sense that seems to pervade so many sexual transactions of the seventies, that our entire selves were at stake."