Association between attachment representations of late-adopted adolescents and attachment state of mind of their adoptive mothers: a pilot-study.

Literature in the attachment field have highlighted that one or both adoptive parents with secure attachment states of mind and without any indexes of irresolution with respect to loss or abuse could be a good protective factor for late-adopted children, who were previously maltreated and neglected, allowing them to revise their insecure and/or disorganized attachment representations (Steele et al., 2007; Steele et al., 2008, Pace, Zavattini, & D’Alessio, 2012). On the other hand, studies on intergenerational transmission of attachment in families with late-adopted children provided discordant results during pre-school and school age (Steele et al., 2008; Pace, & Zavattini, 2011; Verissimo & Salvaterra, 2006), and moreover only few researches on late-adopted during adolescence have been run. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore IWMs of late-adopted adolescents and their mothers in order to assess distribution of attachment representations and intergenerational transmission of attachment. Method. Participants. Our pilot-study involved 38 participants: 22 late-adopted adolescents and their 16 adoptive mothers. All adolescents, without any special needs, were between 12 and 16 years old at time of assessment (M=13.8, DS=1.8) and they aged four to eight years old at time of adoption (M=5.9, DS=1.1). Measures: Attachment representations of adopted adolescents were assessed by the Friend and Family Interview (FFI, Steele & Steele, 2005), while their cognitive status was controlled administering the verbal scale of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III (WISC-III, Orsini, Picone, 2006). The states of mind with respect to attachment of adoptive mothers were classifies by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI, Main, Goldwyn & Hesse, 2002). Procedure. All the measures were administered separately to children and mothers during the same session. FFIs were video-recorded while the AAIs were audio-recorded. Both were successively transcribed verbatim. Results. The attachment representations of late-adopted adolescents were classified: 63.6% secure, 27.3% dismissing and 9.1% preoccupied. None was classified as disorganized, but one girls resulted disorganized as secondary category. Most of adoptive mothers were classified as secure-autonomous (87.5%) by the AAI, while 12.5% (N=2) resulted primarily unresolved regarding past loss or trauma, among these one received secure-autonomous and one dismissing as main category. None was classified as preoccupied. A trend towards a significant association was revealed between children’s FFI secure-insecure classifications and maternal AAI secure-insecure categories. Non verbal IQ scores of adopted adolescents were at the minimal threshold of the normal range with a wide range of scores. Discussion. Our results would provide an empirical contribution to the literature on intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns in adoptive dyads, highlighting the impact that the maternal attachment states of mind could have on attachment representations of their late-adopted children in adolescence.