A distressing story was recently told by an adoptive mother in a New York Times parenting blog, http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/terminating-an-adop... . The mother described her anguish over a decision to give up an adopted child whomshe considered "unattached", and to pass him on to a different family placement. (Her name was given, but I think it may be better not to mention it here.)
By far the greatest proportion of adopted children do very well in their development and have excellent relationships with their adoptive families. Separation from the birth family is only a minor factor in determination of development, according to the investigations by Sir Michael Rutter and his group into the lives of thousands of adoptees from Romanian orphanages. Age at adoption can make some difference, and babies adopted early, after no more than brief orphanage stays, do best. Children adopted later are more likely to have some developmental delays and problems, especially if they were abused or neglected before the adoption. (Well-developed children who were orphaned by war or tragic accident are likely to be grieving, but to catch up developmentally after adoption into an appropriate family.)
Why, then, was it so difficult for the blogging adoptive mother to develop a good relationship with that child? Why did she feel the uncomfortable lack of connection she describes? The development of a connection with an adopted child is a matter of multiple factors, like any other relationship. There is no magic stroke of maternal or paternal love, no single event that triggers the child's emotional connection to the parents.
The feelings and behaviors we call "attachment" and "bonding" are not the simple and immediate matters those words imply. They develop over time and are influenced by characteristics of each person and of their situation. And some of the most important evidence about these feelings and behaviors has to do with the fact that birth parents sometimes feel emotional difficulties about a given child, just as adoptive parents do.
One important factor in the development of parents' feelings about their children is that poor child health or handicapping conditions can make parents less, rather than more, connected with a child. Children with handicaps or developmental delays are more likely to be abused or neglected than well-developed children are. This fact is hardly to our credit as human beings, but there it is: it's easier for us to love children who are active and attractive.
It's also easier for us to love children when we ourselves are physically and emotionally healthy. Our own sadness or fearfulness can make it more difficult for us to want to care for a child. Quite a few years ago, the anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes wrote a book called "Death Without Weeping", in which she discussed child deaths in Brazilian slum areas. She described the impact on the mothers of poverty, illness, emotional isolation, and many experiences of loss. These women designated certain babies as "not wanting to live" and simply did not feed or care for them. Thus, the failure to care or make an emotional connection is not restricted to adoptive families, but should be considered as a natural possibility for all parenting relationships.
Looking at the blog mentioned earlier, we see that a number of these relevant factors were at work in that adoptive family. The adopted child was close to a year old and had not been well cared for; for example, his head was flattened on one side from lying in the same position. One of his disturbing behaviors was smearing feces. There were health issues and developmental delays to cope with. In addition, there were already five birth children to care for--- and the father was for at least part of the time deployed with the military. It's possible that no single one of these factors would have interfered strongly with the development of a family relationship, but in combination they seem to have done so.
In her blog post, the mother notes that she felt the real problem was the child's attachment to her. Because of this belief, she sought "attachment therapy", an ill-defined term, but one which her description suggests relied on repeated mother-child interactions to create the connection she felt to be missing. From what she says, she was convinced that extended eye contact with the child would create an emotional connection. Unfortunately, this is probably not the case, although some "alternative" practitioners still make this claim.
This mother also notes that she herself did not have the emotional involvement with the child that she expected and wanted, and this was probably the crux of the matter. The evidence about problems with the parent-child relationship suggests that the adults in these situations need guidance and treatment as much as the children do. For example, the Delaware psychologist Mary Dozier has shown that foster mothers' attitudes about attachment relationships play an important role in determining their connections with foster children.
Adoptive parents need to understand that multiple factors influence parent-child relationships. When problems arise, treatments also need to take this into account. Therapies that focus primarily on "fixing" the child are not likely to be helpful. Treatments that emphasize extended eye contact between parent and child are especially problematic, as they fail to consider communication in developmentally appropriate ways, but instead act on the assumption that infant development can be repeated and corrected at will.
