Late Adoptions: Attachment Security and Emotional Availability in Mother–Child and Father–Child Dyads

Abstract

Late adoptions: attachment security and emotional availability in mother-child and father-child dyads. A growing body of research suggests that a history of neglect, abuse and institutionalization can negatively affect late-adopted children's attachment representations, and that adoptive parents can play a key role in enabling adopted children to earn secure attachments. Still, only a few studies have explored the quality of caregiver-child interaction in adoptive families. The present study aimed at verifying both the concordance of attachment in adoptive dyads (mother-children and father-children) and the relationship between attachment representations and parent-child interaction. The research involved 20 adoptive families in which the child's arrival had occurred between 12 to 36 months before the assessment, and where children were aged between 4.5 and 8.5 years. Attachment was assessed through the Adult Attachment Interview for parents and through the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task for children. The emotional quality of parent-child interaction was assessed trough the Emotional Availability Scales. Our results pointed out the presence of a relation between attachment representations of late-adopted children and their adoptive mothers (75%, K = 0.50, p = .025). In addition, we found that both insecure children and mothers showed lower levels of EA than secure ones. Some explanations are presented about why, in the early post-adoption period, child attachment patterns and dyadic emotional availability seem to be arranged on different frameworks for the two parental figures.

A Comparison of Attachment representations to Mother and Father using the MCAST

“…On the other hand, using different methods for the assessment of child‐mother and child‐father attachment relationships, respectively, is likely to lead to difficulties in comparing these relationships with respect to features, developmental trajectories, and links to developmental outcomes. Along with other studies (Barone & Lionetti, ; Piermattei et al , ), the present study findings suggest that the MCAST represents a useful measure in research and clinical settings, as it may provide insight into the child's attachment representations to both parents during early childhood and at transition to middle childhood. By combining features of an observational attachment measure, such as the SSP (Ainsworth & Wittig, ) with features of a semi‐structured interviews, such as the Friends and Family Interview (FFI: Steele & Steele, ), the MCAST provides comprehensive insight into the child's attachment representations to both parents.…”

“…In fact, few studies using story stems have included a father character, and even these studies did not specifically code for father attachment (Bernier & Miljkovitch, ; Miljkovitch, Danet & Bernier, ; Page & Bretherton, ; Portu‐Zapiraun, ; Seven & Ogelman, ). Separate MCAST administration addressing attachment to father specifically has only been carried out with two small samples of late‐adopted children (Barone & Lionetti, ; Piermattei, Pace, Tambelli, D'Onofrio & Di Folco, ), and in a recent study on children's emotion understanding (Psychogiou, Nath, Kallitsoglou et al , ). In the latter, attachment to mother and father, respectively, converged, while insecure father‐child attachment was related to lower level of emotion understanding, supporting the unique contribution of father‐child attachment for children's affect regulation.…”

Late‐adoptions in adolescence: Can attachment and emotion regulation influence behaviour problems? A controlled study using a moderation approach

“…Several studies stressed that in adoptive families the quality of parent–child attachment relationships may represent a corrective experience with a positive impact on adopted children's adjustment, thus decreasing the onset of behaviour problems (Beijersbergen, Juffer, Bakermans‐Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, ; Lionetti, ; Molina, Casonato, Ongari, & Decarli, ; Pace, Di Folco, Guerriero, Santona, & Terrone, ; Pace, D'Onofrio, Guerriero, & Zavattini, ; Piermattei, Pace, Tambelli, D'Onofrio, & Di Folco, ; Steele et al, ; Steele, Hodges, Kaniuk, Hillman, & Henderson, ; Steele, Hodges, Kaniuk, & Steele, ; Steele, Hodges, Kaniuk, & Steele, ; van der Voort et al, ).…”

Untitled

“…Although IC is rarely observed in North America and Western Europe, that is where the overwhelming majority of scientific research on the role of IC in human well-being is taking place. Therefore, most of the data regarding children growing up without their biological parents is derived from studies investigating the effects of foster/adoption family transition -the most common solution for orphans or abandoned children in North American and Western European countries -on children's developmental outcomes (e.g., Dubois-Comtois et al, 2015;Ferrari, Vezzali, & Rosnati, 2017;Piermattei, Pace, Tambelli, D'Onofrio, & Di Folco, 2017).…”