Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Infant-Mother Attachment of Internationally Adopted Children in the Netherlands

Infant-Mother Attachment of Internationally Adopted Children in the Netherlands In the Netherlands, 80 mothers and their infants, adopted from Sri Lanka, South Koreaand Colombia, were observed at home at 6 and 12 months to rate the adoptivemother’ssensitivity, and in the Strange Situation at 12 and 18 months toassess the infant-mother attachment relationship. All inter-racially adopted infantswere placed before the age of 6 months, with a mean age of 11 weeks, in adoptivefamilies with or without biological children. Coded withAinsworth’sclassification scheme the results reveal 74% secure attachmentrelationships, a percentage comparable to that of normative studies. The resultsindicate no differences regarding the child’scountry of origin, or the(non)presence of biological children. The results contradict findings from a studythat revealed an over-representation of insecure infant-mother attachmentrelationships in a sample of American mothers with an interracially adopted infant.In the current study the adoptive mother’ssensitivity seems comparable tothe sensitivity of nonadoptive mothers, a finding that concurs with the attachmentresults. It is suggested that the outcomes in this study may be partly explained bythe fact that these infants were placed for adoption at a rather young age, withrelatively favourable circumstances prior to the placement. This may well indicatethat adoption placement per se, without the cumulative effects of understimulationand lack of personal affection that older placed children often experience ininstitutions, does not inevitably lead to a disturbed parent-infant relationship. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Behavioral Development SAGE

Infant-Mother Attachment of Internationally Adopted Children in the Netherlands

Download PDF
15 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/infant-mother-attachment-of-internationally-adopted-children-in-the-QFJRMAkp8M

References (35)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
Copyright © by SAGE Publications
ISSN
0165-0254
eISSN
1464-0651
DOI
10.1080/016502597385469
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In the Netherlands, 80 mothers and their infants, adopted from Sri Lanka, South Koreaand Colombia, were observed at home at 6 and 12 months to rate the adoptivemother’ssensitivity, and in the Strange Situation at 12 and 18 months toassess the infant-mother attachment relationship. All inter-racially adopted infantswere placed before the age of 6 months, with a mean age of 11 weeks, in adoptivefamilies with or without biological children. Coded withAinsworth’sclassification scheme the results reveal 74% secure attachmentrelationships, a percentage comparable to that of normative studies. The resultsindicate no differences regarding the child’scountry of origin, or the(non)presence of biological children. The results contradict findings from a studythat revealed an over-representation of insecure infant-mother attachmentrelationships in a sample of American mothers with an interracially adopted infant.In the current study the adoptive mother’ssensitivity seems comparable tothe sensitivity of nonadoptive mothers, a finding that concurs with the attachmentresults. It is suggested that the outcomes in this study may be partly explained bythe fact that these infants were placed for adoption at a rather young age, withrelatively favourable circumstances prior to the placement. This may well indicatethat adoption placement per se, without the cumulative effects of understimulationand lack of personal affection that older placed children often experience ininstitutions, does not inevitably lead to a disturbed parent-infant relationship.

Journal

International Journal of Behavioral Development – SAGE

Published: Jan 1, 1997

There are no references for this article.