Attachment across the lifespan: insights from adoptive families

Abstract

Research with adoptive families offers novel insights into longstanding questions about the significance of attachment across the lifespan. We illustrate this by reviewing adoption research addressing two of attachment theory's central ideas. First, studies of children who were adopted after experiencing severe adversity offer powerful tests of the unique consequences of experiences in early attachment relationships. Although children who experience early maltreatment or institutionalization show remarkable recovery in the quality of their attachments after being placed with their adoptive families, experiencing pre-adoptive adversity also has long-lasting repercussions for these individuals' later attachment representations. Second, adoptive families allow for genetically-informed examinations of the intergenerational transmission process. Indeed, despite the lack of genetic relatedness, adoptive parents' attachment representations are associated with their children's attachment behaviors and representations across childhood and adolescence.

Assessing changes in the internal worlds of early- and late-adopted children using the Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP)

“…Hence, the study findings are in line with previous research and suggest the deleterious effects of maltreatment on young children's attachment patterns (Chesmore, et al, 2017;Davis, et al, 2014;Toth and Manly, 2018). They confirm the relationship between early experience of relational trauma and lost and insecure attachments (Raby and Dozier, 2019;Stronach, et al, 2013), typically of the disorganised-disoriented type response (Barnett, Vondra and Schonk, 1996).…”

The Michigan infant mental health home visiting model

“…Across the core components elaborated above, relationships are the linchpin, the force that binds infant to parent, parent to therapist, and therapist to supervisor. Connecting the past to the present, embedded in the model, is the belief that sensitive intervention in the early years of life hold great potential for promoting infant mental health and well‐being for the current baby and for generations of infants to come (Bowlby, ; Fraiberg et al., ; Raby & Dozier, ).…”

“…Because attachment theory suggests that relational templates can be transmitted through generations (Lyons‐Ruth et al. ; Raby & Dozier, ; Sroufe et al., ), the IMH‐HV model may also be protective for future generations.…”

Object attachment as we grow older

“…The theory of interpersonal attachment was originally developed over half a century ago through the research of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth [ 1 ] and has since developed into a field of research spanning the lifespan [ 2 ]. The concept of object attachment is similarly well archived [ 3 ]; however, the majority of empirical research on the subject is limited to children and the transition into adolescence.…”