Attachment in Adoption
Abstract
Families are able to adopt children through the three pathway process, which is by internal adoptions, private infant adoption agencies, and public child welfare systems. Each pathway presents unique developmental challenges and opportunities. Therefore, this paper looks at various attachment issues that children face once they are adopted. Adopted children are often at risk of experiencing problems with adoptions, mostly internalizing, externalizing, and attention issues. This paper will also highlight the social and biological processes that affect children’s adaptation across time and what can be done to prevent attachment issues. The experience of stress during adoption may have major impacts on the endocrine system, and these effects may contribute to problems with brain development, physical growth, and effects on emotional, social, and cognitive development. The attachment theory is discussed as a behavioral system that is designed to maintain physical and psychological closeness to the caregiver and provide a secure base for the children. The paper also looks at attachment-based therapies and treatment for attachment disorders to help reduce attachment problems during adoption.
Introduction
Adoption is the legal transfer of rights and responsibility from the child’s biological parents to other adults who are willing to raise the child (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). Attachment is the connection that develops between parents and their children, especially in mothers during pregnancy, as they look forward to the birth of the child. Developing a safe attachment is essential to children as they are able to carry the foundation of trust and mental representation of romantic relationships into adulthood. Adoption presents a unique situation in respect to the “child-parent” attachment process since it entails special challenges and circumstances for the process of bonding: children are split up from their primary attachment and caregiver, then moved to a foster home and finally adopted by a new family in an effort to establish new bonds (Juffer et al., 1997). Parental sensitivity towards children’s signals is considered to be important for cognitive and social-emotional development throughout their childhood and adolescence life (Schoenmaker et al., 2015).
According to Lionetti (2014), it is the past experiences that interfere with adopted children in developing attachment bonds with their adoptive caregivers. Because of this, children find it difficult to develop attachment relationship with their new primary caregivers and end up experiencing various issues such as attachment disorders such as stress, mental health difficulties, emotional and behavioral issues, and even have problems in their emotional, social and cognitive developments. To comprehend the phenomena in the attachment process, attachment theory provides an applicable theoretical framework for building a successful attachment with adopted children. The three pathways to adoption (adoption through private agencies, adoption through the public child welfare system, and international adoption) provide considerably early developmental contexts and experiences that shape developmental pathways in foreseeable ways.
Three pathways to adoption
It is very hard to generalize adoption since children have different experiences between birth and the time they are placed with an adoptive family. The three pathways to adoption highlight important experiences and challenges that children face during adoption. Understanding the trends influencing the three pathways to adoption is essential in determining the future needs of the adopted children. To different degrees, the “three pathways” to adoption may expose children to several negative effects such as disconnection from birth parents, institutionalization, maltreatment, and teratogenic prenatal environments (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). Understanding the social and biological processes that affect the chances of maladaptive or adaptive development trajectories in adopted children is expected to make essential contributions to the health of these children as well as their families.
Although most of the adopted children grow within the normal range, some negative results are evident in adopted children who experienced early trauma or adversity prior to placement. These adopted children tend to show high rates of developmental deficits, psychiatric disorders, development, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (DeJong, Hodges & Malik, 2016). Even in children that have not gone through early diversity, several patterns of earlier positive adjustments followed by behavior problems and socioemotional problems during the teen years and middle childhood exist (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014).
Adoption issues that children face during adoption
Stress
Stress reactivity influences several biological forces, which may be involved during the adoption of children. For children experiencing adversity at an early age, what begins as a protective attribute in the body’s normal response to stress may initiate long-standing issues in the development of children. Although many children that are adopted have tolerable stress experiences, at times, these children may also experience chronic or acute stress before adoption and at various times after adoption (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). The experience of adversity in children before adoption is likely to impact the stress system of children and have developed processes later. In the sphere of adoption, enhance assessments of early experiences of stress in children may illustrate certain ways in which the processes of neuroendocrine intervene between early stress experiences and a wide array of cognitive, physical, and socioemotional outcomes (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). According to Gray (2012), children under the age of six are most vulnerable to grief after the loss of their primary caregiver such as parents.
Depression or grief
Depression within adopted children seems to be linked with environmental stressors and not factors that are linked with depression (Peters, Atkins, McKay, 1999). Most children go through depression or grief because of the feeling of rejection, particularly by their biological family, and adopted children at the adolescence stage are likely to suffer from identifying conflicts because of their membership in two different families.
Psychological growth: Brain and Body
The brain development of children who have experienced adoption and early adversity is different and is likely to influence cognitive and social functioning. In a study conducted by the ERA, it was found out that there was a delay in brain development because of attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) patterns in noninstitutionalized children (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). Other than growth delays as a result of nutritional deficiencies, the link between children’s experience in adoption and growth failure is affected by the systems of stress. It is estimated that for every two months of institutionalized/foster care, children tend to lose almost one month of “linear” growth (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). Children who are placed in adoption, especially those who are less 12 months old, have lagged in weight, height, and head circumference (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014).
Irregular sleeping patterns
Beyond issues in physical growth, tough experiences in foster homes may have a negative influence on the sleeping patterns of children and their succeeding cognitive, behavioral, and emotional function (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014). For the children in foster care systems that have experienced trauma, their sleeping time may be stressful in ways beyond their general fears, as children may be afraid of the dark because of a lack of trust from their caregivers. Specific types of sleeping patterns for adopted children include nigh walking, nightmares, crying in sleep, longer periods of talking while asleep and problems when it comes to initiating sleep (Grotevant & McDermott, 2014).
The attachment theory
The attachment theory by Bowlby is a type of developmental theory that based in evolutionary and ethology principles. The attachment theory is discussed as a behavioral system that is designed to maintain physical and psychological closeness to the caregiver and provide a secure base for the children (Edens & Cavell, 1999). The ethological perspective of the theory is that attachment behaviors came from the instincts of survival designed to keep parents and caretakers close by. Bowlby suggested that human beings were born with the drive for attachment just like their drive for sex and food (Watson, 1997). So as to explain the quality of attachment in relationships, Bowlby proposed that experiences with parents or caregivers are internalized as working models (Watson, 1997). These models are meant to organize social interactions and personal development of people during childhood and infancy as well as creation and maintenance of close relationships
Treatment of attachment disorders
If children, especially infants, get consistent good care from the caretakers in terms of interactive relationships, they are likely to get attached by the time they turn three years old. Children who do not get the care they need by the time they turn three years old, especially those who get into foster care often have attachment disorders. According to Watson (1994), attachment disorders are categorized into three types. Children whose attachment process were interrupted early, or had unhealthy attachments are inadequately attached children; children who had good early caretaking in their first 1 to 2 years but was interrupted by an inexplicable loss such as the death of the parent are traumatized children; and the children whose caretaking lacked consistency are non-attached children (Watson, 1997).
Theory on how attachments are developed provides the basic structure for treating attachment disorders (Watson, 1997). So as to learn how to attach, young children, need stability, good nurture, and security from their adoptive families. Lack of those ingredients, there would be a delay in developing the attachment process. Although the favorable time for young children to attach successfully is between age one and age three, an attachment can still be learned later. Just like other skills such as language acquisition, attachment is not easily learned if children had not learned it earlier. However, the most useful component in treating children with attachment disorders remains a stable and safe environment with consistency in effective nurturing. A functioning family having adults that can make easy attachments can easily aid young children with attachment disorders to be able to make up for their earlier deficits. Beyond meeting development needs and nurturing to the adopted children, adoptive parents can also provide belated opportunities for their children on how to create attachments. Because treatment goals are aimed at meeting the child’s earlier unmet needs, caregivers should be able to welcome and accept regressive behavior from the child so as to allow effectual contact (Watson, 1997). This implies that the family needs to have a high tolerance for immature behavior, which often means a disturbing symptom. Acknowledging the system as the way through which a child communicates their unmet needs should provide the caregiver with the opportunity to meet their needs
Providing new experiences as a way of filling developmental gaps is much harder with older children (Watson, 1997). Their ability to communicate their needs and allow parents to respond to them usually runs contrary to their development issues. The good thing is that the corrective response of taking care of adults has symbolic importance when the child has the ability to act in symbolic ways, especially when they are almost five years of age. Sometimes children who have suffered from serious attachment trauma may require treatment outside the care of the family, which is known as outpatient treatment (Watson, 1997). This type of treatment may be behaviorally adaptive, emotionally intrusive, or cognitively oriented, and it is important for caregivers to be involved. The treatment of difficulties in attachment is directed towards (1) helping children to more comfortable even with attachment limitations, (2) teaching a child way that will encourage seeking attachments, (3) providing interpersonal treatment experiences, which are aimed at breaking the defenses of manipulation and control, or (4) helping children to comprehend what has happened and how to adapt the new life (Watson, 1997).
In relation to attachment disorders, the primary treatment is still the same: providing a stable nurturing and interactive environment, offering opportunities for symbolic caregiving; viewing symptoms as developmental and communications gaps; and use appropriate therapeutic approaches (Watson, 1997). There is an additional method that may enable young adults who have experienced difficulties in an attachment to learn the attachment process. The young adults who have become parents and have attachment disorders may learn to attach by educating their children the process of making attachments. This may be effective when the parents are taught the significance of attachments and learn the attachment methods in parenting classes (Watson, 1997). In learning the ways to interact with babies effectively, parents can symbolically fill their own attachment deficiency.
Attachment-based therapies
A substantial amount of clinical writings on attachment-basement therapies view the children are the main target of clinical interventions (Barth et al., 2005). Treatment of attachment disorders from the clinical perspective is built on the belief that children have repressed rage coming from earlier negative experiences, which interferes with the capability to form an attachment. Therefore, clinical interventions are intended to aid children to release their rage and also teach children that their new caregivers can be trusted. Since most attachment therapies rarely focus on adoptive parents as people who show concern, the lesson taught by them can be hazardous and counterproductive (Barth et al., 2005). The “meta-message” of an intervention may be that that caregivers do not need to accommodate their children and that the anticipated change process in the adjusting family members is unidirectional to each other.
Other attachment therapies’ practitioners have concluded that the breaking of the arousal-relaxation cycle breaks leads to problematic behaviors in children with attachment disorders (Barth et al., 2005). If both birth and substitute caregivers fail to meet the physical and emotional needs of children during their early childhood, they will stop trusting their caregivers to provide their needs. Attachment therapists may rely on Bowlby’s claim children deprived of emotional care exhibit underdeveloped consciences and personalities and also show uncontrolled and impulsive behavior (Barth et al., 2005). Such therapies try to repair the gap in the cycle by confronting children, recognizing and bringing down their psychological defenses, and rebuilding trust in children through a combining of nurturing touch and coercive holding. These therapists are confronting, loving, forceful, and regressive, with the goal of introducing trust in children by forcing them to accept the following instructions from others (Barth et al., 2005).
Holding therapy, which quickly repairs the relationship between a child and a parent is attachment’s theory visible therapeutic methods commonly used in the United States. This approach is mainly used on children who are diagnosed with attachment disorders. Most parents in the United States have used holding theory without needing rigorous research and it contains three main treatment components, which are directed towards children: (i) prolonged noxious stimulation; (ii) prolonged restraint for protection; (iii) interference with functions of the body (Barth et al., 2005).
Christian perspectives of adoption and attachment
The perspectives of adoption to Christians is believed to be a biblical mandate requiring Christians to care for orphans. Most of the times families have referenced the book of Mark 12:31 that commands people to love their neighbor hence encouraging them to take care of orphans. Most parents who obeyed God’s command to love their neighbors were encouraged to adopt, as they believed that God mandated caring for orphans (Firmin et al., 2017). However, adopting orphans is not a call meant for every Christians. There is a major difference between adopting an orphan, which God only calls few people to do and caring for orphans, which all Christians are supposed to do. Christians believe that taking care of orphans and adopting them is a sign of a faultless religion and this can be seen in James 1:21 that says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
When God came to the Garden of Eden and called out for Adam, He already was aware of what had happened and why Adam was hiding. However, he still invited Adam to have a walk with him so that they can continue their relationship. In this story, counselors do not notice the apple eating part but the desire of God to maintain his relationship with us and His desire for intimacy with human beings. The account of creation in Genesis reminds us of God’s love towards us as well as the fact that God has given us intimate relationship just like those we have on our children, spouses and parents (Clinton & Sibcy, 2006). Despite Adam and Eve disobeying God, He still forgave them and allowed them to form attachment relationship with Him. The same way God welcomed Adam and showed him love, Christians are encouraged to approach orphans who feel lost and need love and care and thus provide them with their needs and form attachment relationships with them.
Conclusion
Human connections through attachment and bonding are important especially in children who have just been adopted. Several studies have showed that it is difficult for children to make bonds and attachment with their adoptive parents because of the experiences they had at foster care systems or the feeling of rejection from their biological parents. Children may also show difficulty in developing attachment with new people in their lives especially when they had consistence love and care and it was taken away from them all of a sudden such as the death of the parent. It is the stress that kicks in later that makes it difficult for children to create attachment bonds with their new caregivers. Children who are adopted go through various challenges and problems as they try to adopt in the new situation and some may even portray attachment disorders such as irregular sleeping patterns slow brain and physical development.
Despite the attachment disorders in children, caregivers can still manage to help them develop attachment relationships through attachment based therapies and providing the love care and needs that children require. Young children, need stability, good nurture, and security from their adoptive families to enable them develop attachment relationship with them. Once there needs are met then it becomes easier for children to form attachment bonds with their adoptive families. Christians also believe that it is important for them to take care of orphans and also adopt them when need arise. This is because God mandated Christians to love their neighbors and treat them accordingly.
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