Attachment in late-adopted, residential-care and community adolescents: a multi-method comparative study.

Introduction. Late-adopted and residential-care adolescents are supposed to be more at risk of insecurity or disorganization in attachment than their community peers, due to the higher adverse childhood experiences (Vorria et al., 2015). However, some studies suggested no differences in attachment between late-adoptees and community adolescents (Pace et al., 2018), while residential-care adolescents showed less security and more disorganization in attachment compared with peers (Bifulco et al., 2016; Vorria et al., 2015). Nevertheless, findings are controversial because few studies compared these high-risk groups during adolescence and results obtained with interviews and self-reports often diverge (McSherry et al., 2016). In this multi-method study, we compared the attachment in late-adopted, residential-care and community adolescents, using both semi-structured interviews and self-reports. Methods. Participants were 75 adolescents (aged 11-19y, M=15.5, 53% boys), 25 each group (late-adopted, residential-care and community). Measures were: 1) the Friends and Family Interview (FFI, Steele and Steele, 2005), a semi-structured interview to assess adolescents’ attachment representations as Secure-Autonomous, Insecure-Dismissing, Insecure-Preoccupied, Disorganized-Disoriented, both in terms of classifications and scores, focusing on narrative’s coherence; 2) the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA, Armsden and Greenberg, 1987), a well-known self-report used to measure attachment’ security towards mother, father and peers. Results. There were no differences among groups in FFI’s attachment classifications (Table1, p>.09). Comparing the scales (Table2), the residential group showed scores significantly lower in security, and higher in disorganization and dismissing on FFI (p<.04), showing also poorest coherence (p=.005). Using the IPPA, both late-adoptees and residential adolescents reported lower scores only in attachment to mother (p<.01). Discussion. Residential-care adolescents are confirmed to be more at risk of insecurity or disorganization in attachment, while late-adoptees overlapped with community peers. Authors discussed the differences among groups, highlighting the utility of a multi-method approach.