Post # 14 Attachment Theory
As is inevitable when seeking to understand adoption as family, this post addresses the adoption concern that is ‘attached to the hip’ of most adoption conversations. It is safe to say that a lot of research and writing has been done around the theories of human attachments and family systems. It is equally safe to say that I have read a fair bit now. Thus I think it might be just as safe to say that maybe this blog will offer a nod in that direction and then zero in on the aspect of these theories where I want most to seek hope, ‘Secured Attachment’. I first came across Secured Attachment in Peter Lovenheim’s book, The Attachment Effect. He refers to it as “earned security” attachment (22). Until then I had the impression that the attachments were set in our lives, though writers did often tuck in an added phrase noting that attachment styles may be “malleable”.
Yasik is now an adult seeking to develop his life and relationships from a childhood which has been quite thoroughly detailed in Posts 1 to 13. I want to sift through material on Attachment to see if we are hard-wired by our experiences in childhood OR if (and I think a hint of this is already at play) we as human beings are malleable enough to develop a healthy capacity to love whatever deficits were our experience in our beginnings.
My reading points to foundational studies in human experiences of Attachment that focus most often on the work of John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Donald Winnicott and Murray
Bowen, who developed another way to look at individuals and their relationships, Family Systems Theory. Here are the highlights: John Bowlby’s study led him to present the theory which says that children are born ‘pre-programmed’ to attach, initially with one main caregiver. He also felt that there was “a critical period of developing attachment” of up to 5 years after which attachment may not happen and may engender “long term cognitive, social, and emotional difficulties for that infant”[i].
Or more specifically according to one researcher in Lovenheim’s book, Bowlby’s theory derived from the baseline that “The attachment behavioral system is largely about the management of fear and how we respond to threats”[ii].
Mary Ainsworth later provided a way to measure Attachment, with the ‘Strange Situation’ procedure. Between them they came up with four attachment styles: secure, anxious- preoccupied, avoidant, and disorganized which affect “emotional and social development, relationship patterns, coping and resilience, mental health, parenting and caregiving”[iii].
Bringing the theory up to date, a professor of Attachment Theory told Lovenheim that individuals are no longer boxed into a particular Attachment style but rather are each found somewhere along the axis on a graph of the four styles[iv].
And now for the caveats:
Jerome Kagan puts a wrench into this spanner with research that suggests “that the effect of early experience, if any, is far more fleeting than is commonly assumed”[v].
And Martin Seligman, in his 2007 book, would reinforce this thought with this declaration:
…Bad childhood events, contrary to the credo, do not mandate adult troubles – far from it. There is no justification, according to … studies, for blaming your adult [struggles]…on what happened to you as a child … If you want to blame your parents for your adult problems, you are entitled to blame the genes they gave you, but you are not entitled – by any facts I know – to blame the way they treated you[vi].
And it would seem Dr. Brian Allen agrees for he points out
a basic fact about attachment behavior is that it alters as a result of a variety of experiences and goes on altering for many years. Later attachment behavior is not entirely determined by early events, and the later events that affect this behavior do not always seem to have anything to do directly with attachment …[vii] .
Patricia Crittenden goes so far as to develop the Dynamic Maturation Model which sees attachment behaviour continually evolving and influenced by culture and context[viii].
RAD
Because this label, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) so often comes up in a discussion of Attachment, I have tucked in a definition and some comments.
Barbara Cummins Tantrum quotes a researcher who defines children diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) as having
difficulty forming emotional attachments to others, show a decreased ability to experience positive emotion, cannot seek or accept physical or emotional closeness, and may react violently when held, cuddled or comforted. Behaviorally affected children are unpredictable, difficult to console, and difficult to discipline. Moods fluctuate erratically, and children may seem to live in a “flight, fight, or freeze” mode. Most have a strong desire to control their environment and make their own decisions. Changes in routine, attempts to control, or unsolicited invitations to comfort may elicit rage, violence, or self-injurious behavior. But then Tantrum writes, “The problem with the diagnosis of RAD is that it is often misapplied, …”[ix].
Brian Allen agrees, saying that the term RAD “is applied to a very small proportion even of children with histories of severely [SIC] neglect. What’s more, this disorder appears no longer to be present after children have been in family settings for a while…”[x].
Joan Didion’s Notes To John (Alfred A. Knopf, 2025, 185) provide this entry:
7 February 2001, I brought up this piece…about the 10 year old who was killed in the course of unlicensed therapy for reactive attachment disorder. I said the piece had made me think about a lot of things – (1) whether the child was truly disordered or whether the mother had simply needed more affection than any child (let alone this child) was able to give; (2) whether this was part of the dynamic in the troubled Easter European adoptions; (3) whether this was to a perhaps lesser extent true of all adoptive parents, at least mothers – i.e., don’t they by definition need a child in a stronger than perhaps normal way?
“I would say that to one extent or another it is true, yes. I did have a patient, by the way, who adopted a Russian child. The child had been adopted in Russia, then given back, then adopted a second time and given back. So by the time this five-year-old arrived in this country – speaking not a word of English – she was a deeply troubled child.”
He said that a few years ago he had sat at a P&S alumni dinner next to a woman, the president of the alumni association, who specialized in attachment disorders and claimed to be having considerable success with an alternative therapy. “She rents a gym for 3 days, she gets 3 generations of the family into the gym, everybody sits on mats and tells everybody else what the expected and how they were disappointed. Et cetera. Lots of hugging, but none of the stuff that was going on in the case you described . She claims to be successfully treating attachment disorders even in adults. She also claims to be successfully treating autism, so I’m not entirely unskeptical. The older I get, however – and I’ve noticed this among my colleagues – the more willing I am to entertain alternative medicine. You can’t not. When you see the shortcomings of traditional medicine. Particularly in my field. I did refer the patient with the Russian child to her.”
An aside:I found Notes to John to be packed with the questions/concerns I too have had/have as an adoptor. I deeply appreciated the thoughts/notes she kept in in her journal whether she intends them to be published or not.
Attachment and Adoption
Enough of the generalities. Let me zero in on attachment in the realm of adoption. Our son came to us a year and a half past the tender years for Attachment. Hours after meeting us, he said “I have a Mama and Papa now”. And as deeply as Dave and I understood love for our child, we loved him. And to this I add some conjecture. I have read often enough how critical the tender first three years are. Yet, what if Yasik was not subjected to all that the Romanian children were? What if, though he was not adopted until 4 1/2, he received some care from his mother if not all the nutrition and nurture he needed? The year in the hospital, being a hospital, was unlikely to have offered little beyond regular and basic food and care, but in the orphanage at 2, maybe he was given enough attention by staff to gain some ground because it has always been hard for Dave and I to see him as deficient. He showed most days that he was feeling positive emotions, sought closeness and cuddles, was not prone to rages or injurious behaviour and definitely caring of those he loved and loves. He did not have RAD. And when he had enough English to talk about the orphanage, he told us that he remembered he slept in a big room with lots of beds and a big table where he ate with lots of kids and he was happy there and now he was happy here because he knew we were coming for him. This is not to ignore, in the face of research and reams of anecdotal reinforcement, that attachment issues can be easily dismissed, issues with the sense of betrayal or understanding of the meaning of family leaving him with some lack of a sense of secure attachment in those tender years.
Pick up any random book on adoption. Granted some will be gushing through the honeymoon period, but most are hammering out the message that adoptees are at risk for living difficult lives. This is a major theme in Betty Jean Lifton’s Journey of the adopted Self: a quest for wholeness[xi] and though Barbara Cummins Tantrum acknowledges that not all students of adoption would agree with her, she seems not to hesitate using the word ‘All’ when she writes that “All adopted children have an attachment break, and all adopted children have grief and loss”[xii].
The negative impact, sense of loss, sense of shame are Nancy Verrier’s deepest messages in another well-known adoption book, Primal Wound: understanding the adopted child. Yet here is a critique of her book that concludes:
However, the outcomes of that trauma as laid out by Verrier do not hold up with enough consistency, or even accuracy, to warrant sufficient weight to the long-term impacts on the child. This is, in my opinion, due to a host of millions of other factors that are really hard to account for that Verrier does not sufficiently consider including, genetics, race, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the environment of the adoptive family. … And for many, there are no experiences which would indicate the primal wound even exists[xiii].
Here comes a strongly emphasized ‘In Fact’, I came across a study that starts from the premise that maybe adoptees are not at greater risk for a problem-filled life. The article calls out how often positive adoption stories are not put forward nor is there enough research on what other factors need attention in an adoption study[xiv].
So, of course, I appreciate this proclamation: Let it be announced that a myth which persists in saying that adopted children don’t bond as well as biological children has with much good research been pronounced dead[xv].
On with a look at some of those ‘other factors’ because, while memory shadows the negative and holds more tightly to the positive, my journal has lots of little notes of Yasik’s showing love to us. Picking buttercups for Dave when he is told that Dad reprimanded him because he loves him, telling me how much he likes walking in the moonlight with me, or telling me about a dream he had where he opened a gift and inside was a card which said, “I love you, Mommy”. He could make me blink when he favoured me with one of his brilliant smiles. And yes, I am well aware that shade is often cast over these sentimental memories. Most studies of adoptees consider that perhaps they, in order to feel safe in their families, will people please. Was Yasik trying to keep our attachment to him strong in a way he may have learned when he lived in a world of insecure attachments? Why did he wish as an adult that he could have had some input in his adoption? So maybe there was an insecurity covered by adaptations learned early in his life, but can’t the ‘maybe’ just as easily be attached to Yasik simply being loving because he was happy being attached to us?
Was he always haunted by a sense of insecurity. I mean he could also tell us, “I have a problem. I don’t think you really love me”. Because he had to go to bed. And another time, “I wish you weren’t my parents”, providing suggestions of other parents who he thought might be nicer, a couple who made our eyes roll. He expressed this wish again because we were making him go to bed early that night. And on another night when he was around 10-years-old he lipped off to Dave who smacked his bottom, and so asked me later why I think it might be that parents are meaner to kids who have a different beginning and come from a different place? Yes it could be the responses of a child uncertain if he could trust our commitment to him. Or, it could just be a ticked off kid, who like many a bio-kid, tries such observations on.
On with a consideration of other factors at play.
Acknowledging that adoption impacts attachment, I will start with our biology. Dr. Nicole Letourneau and Justin Joschko in the chapters, “The Neural Garden” and “ACE in the Hole” make the case that “neglectful parenting has an adverse effect on children’s development” but they do not leave an adoptee or adoptive parents in total despair for while the book is heavily weighted in a discussion of the impact of a damaging start to life, they also affirm that “Good parenting doesn’t require a degree or tons of cash or a rigid adherence to any set rules…all you need is love (though effort and bit of common sense don’t hurt either). Happily, love is something that just about every parent has in abundant supply”[xvi].
We are not certain what Yasik’s relationship to his orphanage caregivers was but we do know his sister was happy in her orphanage and it seemed Yasik mattered to his caregivers in the few moments we watched them interact. And for what it is worth, my journal says that as Yasik said good bye to the little group on the porch of the orphanage waving good bye to him, he had two big watery tears in his eyes.
However, I asked Google what the Russian attachment style was from 1991 to 1997. This was after the fall of the Soviet Union, a time when hope for economic conditions in Russia were at a low point. While Google said it was Authoritative for families, Google led me to another factor to be considered when looking at adoption and attachment, a kind of specialized and more recently minted Russian attachment style for orphanages.
Rachel Stryker was able to interview and write about the perspective of staff in orphanages during these years. Because life outside an orphanage for a child was bleak, and adoption was not an option for many children in the Russian orphanage system, staff felt it best that children remain in the orphanage until they were 18. At that time they would be released but most likely into a world where, without family, they would most often be forced to live on the fringes of society. Staff, therefore, believed it best to train up these children in what was labelled, ‘Toughened Attachment’.
Toughened attachment is characterized by the understanding that the best forms of attachment behavior are non-responsive. The rationale is that non-responsive care trains children to be resourceful and thus increases their chances for survival in bleak times… namely, a relationship whereby children from an early age could be taught to best maximize opportunities in resource-lean environments. … [In 1996 then], ‘toughened attachment,’ or purposively non-responsive infant and child care was thought to instill in children a more practical approach to relating to others in uncertain circumstances. … Encourage self-soothing, delaying responses to child crying, encouraging children to ask peers rather than adults for help when they had problems, or telling children in consciously cheerful or humiliating ways, to discover the answers to questions on their own somewhere in the orphanage…[xvii] .
This is possibly the style that directed staff at Yasik’s orphanage.
Yet coming from such restricted nurturing, “the claim that adoption is a risk factor for general adjustment difficulties remains controversial”[xviii], even when acknowledging adoptees’ loss of biological connections or of being abandoned and sensing their ‘differentness’.
This was the way Yasik saw it, trying to understand the differences between his birth and that of his friends, thinking that some kids come from Mom’s tummy and other kids are ‘picked kids’. When he reached the pre-teen years, he would say, “You aren’t my real parents” and when talking about some of the differences, he would say, using the language he had, that he was becoming aware that, whatever it was at the time, came from his real parents. He was becoming aware that parts of him belong to some other people/place, another factor. My hope at the time was that while he is divided, may it never destroy his spirit.
Yes as I have written about in earlier posts, in orphanages, the inconsistent nurture care givers provide “only a tiny fraction of the time that a parent would spend with her baby. This doesn’t provide enough repetition for oxytocin connections to be formed. … and oxytocin guides [the brain’s] wiring in the case of attachment and bonding”.
This “… can also make loving itself harder and less satisfying. Like an addict with a tolerance, it can take a higher “dose” to get the same effect. …Consequently, neglected children or those with other attachment disruptions are much harder to soothe or to teach: it takes a great deal more attention to calm them down and make them feel better”[xix].
Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz make this point again and again in The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook. Putting it rather bluntly: “The truth is you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation”[xx], another factor. Yasik told us recently that our unconditional love is his higher power.
Yet Mavis Olesen writes that accepting a child’s differences, sense of loss, loyalty or at least curiosity about origins, sensitivity regarding the child’s negative experiences, and like Bruce Perry advocates, the need for time to be and to catchup to others on the development chart is the task ahead for new adopters. The child may need the holding and hugging normally left behind after early childhood[xxi], another factor.
In view of this need, Deborah Gray advises her readers that adoptees will at first view their new parents in the way they have learned to understand attachment to their former caregivers. Adopters “may have to wait for children to learn to know and to love them”[xxii].
Nonetheless, tacked on to findings, once again the ‘BUT’, ‘YET’, ‘HOWEVER’, ‘NONETHELESS’ words rise for lack of immediate ‘bonding’ or attachment cannot be immediately translated into serious emotional problems within the child. Research is also showing that there “is limited evidence that early maltreatment or institutionalization have long-term effects on adoptive individuals’ attachment security within the adoptive parent-child relationship” although the same research does not deny that “early adversity does have long-term consequences for adopted adults’ general representations of attachment”[xxiii].
As the title states, Thinking Critically About CHILD DEVELOPMENT: examining myths & misunderstandings, critiques child research. As of the printing of this book (2016), Jean Mercer wants us to know quite categorically that “no study done yet has provided the highest possible level of evidence in one direction or another. … [concerning the conventual wisdom] that institutional care for orphaned and separated children is always a cause of serious developmental problems”[xxiv]. As a good researcher, Mercer takes the meta view, that a combination of factors must be considered.
As long as care is consistent reminds Bruce Perry, Peter Lovenheim and pretty much anyone who takes a careful look at research[xxv].
Turning to the ‘sample of one’ study of an adoptive father, John Brooks worked through his grief with a very personal sharing of his and his wife’s seeking to understand their daughter’s tragic life. This meant acknowledging that, “… in retrospect, it was almost impossible to distinguish among the typical insecurities of a teenager, attachment issues from infancy, and dangerous suicidal tendencies when the symptoms looked so much alike”. More factors? Yet as he quotes another adopter, they needed to recognize the magnitude of an adoptee’s sense of loss: “Being chosen by your adoptive parents means nothing compared to being un-chosen by your birth mother.”
From the moment we brought Casey into our home, it seemed as though we did everything wrong. We assumed that the past would fade into oblivion; nurture would prevail over nature…. Rather than sending her off by herself, we should have stayed with her, helped her calm down and self-soothe. She needed to know that Mom and Dad would always be there for her unconditionally. … If it were possible, we should have held her for our whole first month together without putting her down. Maybe we would have had a different result. What she need then was lots of human touch[xxvi].
When Yasik was in his early teens we sought a counsellor’s help. We were invited into her office, and waved to sit down on kindergarten-size chairs. After initial introductions, the psychologist asked Dave and I to return to the waiting room, leaving Yasik alone with her, knee to knee on the children’s chairs. Those first few minutes of ‘counselling’ told Yasik that he was the one with the problem, and she was the one who was going to fix him. We did not return for a second visit. The Brooks found a counsellor with a different strategy. She believed that attachment struggles would not be alleviated through visits to herself but through supporting a way through to stronger attachment between the parents and the child for “the child’s healing process must come from them rather than the therapist”[xxvii].
At the top of this section on attachment and adoption, I quote Barbara Cummins Tantrum’s use of the word ‘All’ for adoptees as she sets the stage for helping adopters attach to their adopted child. But she moves on, sharing research that may not have been available for Betty Jean Lifton or Nancy Verrier though their books were published in the early 1990s. As in now well-known the brain is plastic, capable of re-wiring. If a child with an attachment difficulty is loved by an adult, as she says, “then magic can happen”. Yes, it is a process, whether with a biological or adoptive child, and takes time but magic can happen. On page 100 of her book, she tells the story of a 12-year-old girl who needed to know that she could trust that her adoptive mother would be there if she took steps to cut herself off from her biological mother. When she trusted that this mother would be there for her, she sent her birth mother a text that may have led to being disowned by this disruptive bio-mother. The adoptive mother says, “I cried because … I knew that my daughter had chosen … attachment”. Another factor: attachment may be an active choice[xxviii].
Maia Szalavitz and Bruce Perry make this point in Born for Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered: “Children themselves make many choices during development that help determine a life’s path”[xxix].
And that sometimes-ignored aspect of research: that there are actually adoptees out there who view their adoption as a positive in their lives. Deborah D. Gray tells the story of an adoptee, who was glad that his adoptive parents, considering what he put them through as he sorted out an understanding of family, stuck with him[xxx].
Kay Ann Johnson, in China’s Hidden Children: abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy writes of the surprisingly many adoptees Johnson’s team heard from who were angry at their bio-parents and expressed loyalty to their “real parents”, the adopters who raised them for as these adoptees said, “The parent who raises the child has greater weight than the one who gives birth”[xxxi].
Let’s end the specific focus of adoption as it relates to attachment with this guideline and one last story.
The writers of Adopting Older Children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over the age of four (note the word ‘practical’ in the title) bring everything down to this baseline. Nice and simple. “The best indicator is whether you, as a parent, are happy and fulfilled in your relationship with your child. Another indicator is whether the child is happy and fulfilled with you as a parent”[xxxii].
In discussing the contributions of Bowlby and others, Jeremy Rifkin adds the findings of Heinz Kohut, another researcher who contributed to the study of attachment, who while he did not dispute the need for caring and consistent nurture,
found that it makes little difference who the early parental provider is, as long as she or he provide the appropriate empathic response for the child’s development. … Anna Freud and Sophie Dann related the story of six children who had survived a German concentration camp in World War II. Over the course of their three years of imprisonment, they were taken care of by an ever-changing set of mothers. As each set of mother surrogates was exterminated, others took their place, until their own deaths. Although the children were justifiably disturbed by the experience, they had a reasonably cohesive self, which can only be attributed to the empathic regard and affection they were given by the many women who took care of them[xxxiii].
Returning to those labels for negative experiences of attachment in infancy and childhood, anxious-preoccupied, avoidant, and disorganized attachment, what is the expectation for the next two thirds of someone’s life? As this question is only beginning to gain wide attention, the expectation is often that, with the developmental influence of those early years, the rest of life will be difficult to navigate successfully or happily (though even this article concluded with hope)[xxxiv]. If you don’t hear, “Well, it’s in the blood” accompanied by rolled eyes, you hear, “Well, she had a difficult childhood” accompanied by a slowly shaking head.
What does this ‘difficult to navigate’ life look like? Psychologists tell us that starting life without being wrapped in secure love means starting life and progressing thorough life with the polar opposite, being wrapped in fear[xxxv].
Being ‘wrapped in fear’ shows itself to the world inhabited, the world this person navigates, as having emotional struggles like depression or anxiety, struggling with personal fears of failure or trust in oneself, and insecurity or a lack of trust of others in social interactions[xxxvi].
Attachment as a child moves into adulthood
But my purpose in writing this post is to find a hope that it is possible to move past the negative to finding a way to navigate through life with a chance at being wrapped in love. In other words, I am looking for Peter Lovenheim’s ‘secured attachment’.
I have already noted, earlier in the post, the many who suggest that attachment styles are not carved into tablets of stone, which as we know anyway can be quite easily smashed to the ground as well and fall into a thousand pieces. Little ole’ Moses proved that one.
Time and again either these articles say attachment changes or they hedge their bets with temporizing language – “may change”, “malleable”, “can be mitigated”, “are not immutable”, “not deterministic”, “not fixed or unchangeable”[xxxvii].
An important quote here:
Attachment styles are not immutable, they can change substantially over time, research suggests, and may differ from relationship to relationship. Enduring a terrible relationship might lead to a less secure attachment orientation; a history of supportive relationships may lead to increased security[xxxviii]. … Perceptions of care and affection from mothers and fathers during childhood were particularly relevant in predicting adult attachment security[xxxix].
I asked Grok 3 how it knows this to be true? It responded by saying Bowlby himself acknowledged that “that attachment behaviors can evolve”. … Studies, such as those by Mary Main and colleagues, introduced the concept of “earned secure attachment. Their work with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) showed that adults who experienced insecure attachment in childhood but developed a coherent narrative about their past (through reflection or therapy) could exhibit secure attachment behaviors”. This article concludes with three other factors: the brain’s ability to re-wire, support from caring others and the personal work toward change[xl].
The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) referred to above asks a set of 18 questions starting with the interviewee’s family background, his or her relationship to each parent, how the person handled childhood upset, sense of rejection, threat or fear, how the early childhood relationships affected the person’s adult life, what relationships with others in childhood were like, and other traumatic events or the loss of a loved one. The interviewee is asked what he or she might have learned from their childhood experiences. The interview closes with questions about the relationships of the interviewee with his or her own children and hopes for the children’s futures. I personally think the request early in the interview asking the interviewee to choose 5 adjectives or words to reflect first the person’s relationship to his or her mother and then to his or her father, is a demanding but likely quite revealing and very specific question of focus[xli].
This allows for hope that children whose attachment relationships were at best tenuous may over time and with the love of a healthy caregiver come to a place of a ‘secured’ attachment as they live out their lives.
Certainly there are now books being written to offer advice on finding a secured attachment. One example, Attached: the new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find – and keep- love, written in 2012, has gained wide and positive attention[xlii].
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I first came across the idea of secured attachment in Lovenheim – until then I had the impression that attachment styles were set in our beings even with the tucked in notes like malleable, Kagan’s message and the lack of positive stories.
Here is what Lovenheim learned:
Earned security comes from one of two things: first, a strong, meaningful relationship with another person – not a caregiver- who some how substitutes for the caregiver [suggesting the caregiver is the source of the difficult attachment]. … [someone who has come along to offer healthy care to the child]… In adulthood, it could be a romantic partner or spouse in a successful, stable marriage or a therapist – “some incredibly influential experience with another person that has a profound impact on you,”… Second, earned security can also come from deep reflection and meaningful insight into one’s own experience…that convinces oneself, “You know, my early experience really suck but maybe I can do better.”… most often earned security results from the combination of a strong, meaningful relationship plus personal insight.
Re: the Adult Attachment Interview, Lovenheim writes, : … “It’s not so much the experience; it’s how you tell the experience. …the point is you can talk about it and you can describe it to me. …Earned secure doesn’t mean that everything’s fine or that you don’t struggle. It means you have enough understanding and enough distance that you can describe things with a certain objectivity[xliii].
The books and articles I’ve read, offer pretty much the same advice for gaining a secured attachment. They suggest the usual counselling advice for most mental health needs: seeking to understand and come to terms with the past, self-care, seeking out a supportive community, seeking therapy[xliv].
Others, like Jerome Kagan, have emphasized the ongoing influence of inborn temperament in shaping human experience… [which] can perhaps be better appreciated by considering just one case from the Minnesota study. When we observed Mike at age 10 at summer camp, he had an interesting mixture of characteristics. He was socially competent, energetic, expressive, and fully engaged, although he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, and readily asked other boys if they wanted to fight. Five years later, he appeared to be a totally different boy. He was withdrawn, inactive, slouched over, and almost inaudible when he spoke, giving one-syllable answers. Where did this change come from? Where did his smile go? Would it ever come back?
The story of the factors affecting Mike’s development is a complex one, but here are some key elements. Mike had a secure early attachment and generally supportive early care. He was a star at the beginning of elementary school. Then his parents went through an ugly divorce when he was in 2nd grade. Once the dust had settled, Mike’s father took custody of his older sister, moved away, and never contacted his son again. Mike went on living in a dilapidated house with his mother, who wasn’t coping well. She frequently sought his advice and generally relied on his support to an inappropriate degree. When Mike was 11, his mother was killed in a tragic accident and he was reluctantly taken in by his mother’s sister. So the signs of adolescent depression we witnessed were completely understandable.
But the story doesn’t end there. When Mike got to community college, he caught the eye of a young woman who was attracted to his quietness and tender heart. They married when he was in his early twenties. His wife turned out to be patient, kind, and attentive. Mike is now a warm and nurturing father in a mutually supportive relationship with his wife. His early attachment history didn’t disappear during his difficult period; it remained there to be tapped when new opportunities for positive relationships presented themselves[xlv].
Maybe it does come down to hugs, one of the first pieces of advice I ever came across.
End notes
[i] McLeod, S. A. Bowlby’s attachment theory. Simply Psychology February 05, 2017 www.simplypsychology.org/bowlby.html
[i] AI Overview of Attachment theory and Family Systems theory as offered by Google.
[ii] Lovenheim, Peter. Attachment Effect: exploring the powerful way our earliest bond shapes our relationships and lives Tarcher, 2018, 79
[iii] https://thecambridgeschool.ac.in/the-attachment-theory-how-childhood-affects-life/
[iv] Lovenheim, Peter. Attachment Effect: exploring the powerful way our earliest bond shapes our relationships and lives Tarcher, 2018, 16
[v] Sroufe, Alan and Daniel Siegel “The Verdict Is In: The case for attachment theory” https://drdansiegel.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/1271-the-verdict-is-in-1.pdf
[vi] Seligman, Martin E.P., Ph.D. What You Can Change…and What You Can’t*: the complete guide to successful self-improvement Vintage Books, 2007, 231,232Top of FormBottom of Form
[vii] Thank, Brian Allen, for Saying “Down With Attachment Disorders”! Tuesday, May 31, 2016 https://childmyths.blogspot.com/search?q=Dr.+Brian+Allen
[viii] https://mindfulcenter.org/understanding-attachment-through-the-dynamic-maturational-model-of-attachment-and-adaptation/
[ix] Tantrum, Barbara Cummins The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster and adopted child North Atlantic Books, 2020, 56-57
[x] Thank, Brian Allen, for Saying “Down With Attachment Disorders”! Tuesday, May 31, 2016 https://childmyths.blogspot.com/search?q=Dr.+Brian+Allen
[xi] Lifton, Betty Jean Journey of the adopted Self: a quest for wholeness BasicBooks, 1994, 34, 35, 110-124
[xii] Tantrum, Barbara Cummins The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster and adopted child North Atlantic Books, 2020, 22
[xiii] https://vialogue.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/the-primal-wound-notes/
[xiv] Grenke, Courtney Janaye “Nature versus Nurture: A Study of Adopted and Biological Children and their Behavioral Patterns” Spring 2012
[xv] “Debunking The Most Common Adoption Myths: Separating Fact from Fiction” https://openarmsadopt.com/debunking-most-common-adoption-myths/
[xvi] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joschko Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence Dundurn, 2013, 175,179
[xvii] Stryker, Rachel “Emotion Socialization and Attachment in Russian Children’s Homes” Global Studies of Childhood, Volume 2, Number 2, 2012 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/gsch.2012.2.2.85
[xviii] Feeney, Judith A., Nola L. Passmore, Candida C. Peterson “Adoption, Attachment and Relationship Concerns: A Study of Adult Adoptees” Personal Relationships, 2007, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 129-147. https://faculty.buffalostate.edu/hennesda/attachment/attachment%20and%20adult%20adoptees.pdf
[xix] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered Wiliam Morrow, 2010, 66, 135
[xx] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook Basic Books, 2017, 92-93, 152,162
[xxi] Olesen, Mavis, Ph.D., Dallas Williams Living In Limbo: families journeying toward understanding 2003, 99,103,216 Though the following address is given in her book, it is no longer available. Her book is still listed as available at other sites. www.geocities.com/adoption_dallas_mavis
[xxii] Gray, Deborah D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents Perspectives Press, Inc.,2002, 24, 53
[xxiii] Raby, K. Lee and Mary Dozier “Attachment across the Lifespan: Insights from Adoptive Families” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6158124/pdf/nihms954457.pdf
[xxiv]Mercer, Jean Thinking Critically About CHILD DEVELOPMENT: examining myths & misunderstandings, 3rd ed. SAGE, 2016, 97, 248
[xxv] Lovenheim, Peter. Attachment Effect: exploring the powerful way our earliest bond shapes our relationships and lives Tarcher, 2018, 72,73
[xxvi] Brooks, John The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide Scribner, 2016, 176, 183, 184, 188
[xxvii] Brooks, John The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide Scribner, 2016, 185
[xxviii] Tantrum, Barbara Cummins The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster and adopted child North Atlantic Books, 2020, 60, 100
[xxix] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered William Morrow, 2010, 136
[xxx] Gray, Deborah D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents Perspectives Press, Inc.,2002, 32-33
[xxxi] Johnson, Kay Ann, China’s Hidden Children: abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy University of Chicago Press, 2016, 56
[xxxii] Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD adopting older children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four New Horizon Press, 2014, 137
[xxxiii] Rifkin, Jeremy The Empathic Civilization: the race to global consciousness in a world in crisis Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2009, 61
[xxxiv] Feeney, Judith A., Nola L. Passmore, Candida C. Peterson “Adoption, Attachment and Relationship Concerns: A Study of Adult Adoptees” Personal Relationships, 2007, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 129-147 https://faculty.buffalostate.edu/hennesda/attachment/attachment%20and%20adult%20adoptees.pdf
[xxxv] “How Can People Who Haven’t Been Loved Learn to Love?” https://exploringyourmind.com/how-can-people-who-havent-been-loved-learn-to-love/#google_vignette
[xxxvi] Gruener, Hillary “People Who Were Unloved As Children Struggle With These 7 Things As Adults” May 17, 2022 https://psychcentral.com/health/unloved-in-childhood-common-effects-on-your-adult-self
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/attachment
[xxxvii] Szalavitz, Maia Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born For Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered Wiliam Morrow, 2010, 55, 137
https://thecambridgeschool.ac.in/the-attachment-theory-how-childhood-affects-life/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/attachment
Mercer, Jean Understanding Attachment: parenting, child care, and emotional development Praeger, 2006, 3, 80, 81
[xxxviii] “Attachment Bonding” Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/attachment
[xxxix] Feeney, Judith A., Nola L. Passmore, Candida C. Peterson “Adoption, Attachment and Relationship Concerns: A Study of Adult Adoptees” Personal Relationships, 2007, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 129-147
https://faculty.buffalostate.edu/hennesda/attachment/attachment%20and%20adult%20adoptees.pdf
[xl] A Question asked to Grok 3 July 26, 2025 – How do you know it to be true that someone whose early years were not securely attached to a parent, would still in adulthood, be able to develop a secured attachment to loved ones? https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_f45f813c-6762-4fec-89fa-9f3932f94ba0
[xli] https://emdrtherapyvolusia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Adult_Attachment_Interview-Main.pdf
[xlii] Levine, Amir, M.D., and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A. Attached: the new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find – and keep- love Tarcher, 2012,175,229
Earned Secure Attachment: Transforming Your Insecure Attachment Style
[xliii] Lovenheim, Peter Attachment Effect: exploring the powerful way our earliest bond shapes our relationships and lives Tarcher, 2018, 22, 23, 45, 46, 225
[xliv] https://psychcentral.com/health/unloved-in-childhood-common-effects-on-your-adult-self
[xlv] Sroufe, Allen, Daniel Siegel “The Verdict Is In: The case for attachment theory” Psychotherapy Networker Washington Vol. 35, Iss. 2, (Mar/Apr 2011).
https://www.proquest.com/central/docview/855734464/3E0F95237C94455EPQ/4?accountid=48753&sourcetype=Magazines
[xlv] Sroufe, Allen, Daniel Siegel “The Verdict Is In: The case for attachment theory” Psychotherapy Networker Washington Vol. 35, Iss. 2, (Mar/Apr 2011).
[1] Kumar, Karthik, MBBS, Pallavi Suyog Uttekar, MD “How Do Hugs Make You Feel?”
https://www.medicinenet.com/how_do_hugs_make_you_feel/article.htm
Packiam Alloway, Tracy, Ph.D. “What 20 Seconds of Hugging Can Do for You”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/keep-it-in-mind/202201/what-20-seconds-hugging-can-do-you
And here are some more recent articles I have come across and see as important to the discussion.
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/attachment-research-gave-some-indication-where-we-could-start-trying-parent-our
https://www.academia.edu/35018573Disorganized_attachment_in_infancy_a_review_of_the_phenomenon_and_its_implications_for_clinicians_and_policy_makers_Disorganized_attachment_in_infancy_a_review_of_the_phenomenon_and_its_implications