Activity 2: Human Growth And Adoption

The textbook explains adoption as human beings caring for non-human primates. In an article from the California State University, Fullerton library in the Anthropology department, an Anthropology researcher, Stein writes “about behavioral definitions of adoption are scarce.” (Stein) The concept of “change of primary caregiver” is central in adoption, but as will be seen, adoptors are often individuals other than adult females. Also, measuring attachment can prove difficult, especially in the field. Anthropology researcher Riedman defines a foster parent as one who “provides exclusive care for another 's offspring.” (Riedman) This also appears over-restrictive, for many cases of adoption in nonhuman

As implied by many physiologist a child’s attachments style is the building blocks to his or her mental development. A child like a structure is sure to crumble if there is a crack in their foundation. Foster children have the potential to stand tall or crumble due to neglect. Attachment styles tend to vary in foster children since they bounce from home to home. In this paper I will discuss the attachment styles foster children share with both their biological and foster parents, as well as the foster child’s potential outcome due to these styles. In order for children to develop

In the U.S. 397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system, as of 2012, more than 58,000 children in the U.S. foster care system were placed in institutions or group homes, not in traditional foster homes (CCAI, 2012). Can these children developmental need be meet in institutions and enable children to make sucker attachments? The American Journal of Psychiatry’s article “A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Foster Care and Institutional Care for Children With Signs of Reactive Attachment Disorder” examines signs of emotionally withdrawn and indiscriminately social reactive attachment disorder in three groups of young Romanian children that were abandoned by their parents. The placement of children into an institution was made by Romanian child protective officials. The research group ensured that no child, once placed in foster care, through the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, would be returned to an institutional setting, either during or after the study (Smyke, 2012).

What are the consequences when children are not given the love, a sense of safety, and care they need? While some of the behaviors of Reactive Attachment Disorder has been noted as far back as the mid-20th century (Fox and Zeanah 32), and was not even introduced as a disorder until 1980 in the 3rd edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Gleason and Zeanah 207). Children have been exhibiting the symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder long before scientist started documenting it. During the early years, not much was known about Reactive Attachment Disorder, although scientist have learned much about this disorder since. Unfortunately, it is a common misconception that only adopted children have this disorder. The thought is that children taken from their parental units by state officials or from orphanages, mostly from overseas, at a young age and placed into new homes caused this problem, but this has since been found to be untrue. Children that do not receive the nurturing love, the feeling of safety, and are abused in many different ways will have this disorder. The life of a child diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder can be extremely difficult due to the characteristic angry outbursts, the habitual telling of untruths, and recurrent stealing which can cause the people around them have a difficult time making a connection with them.

The adoptive family may ignore or make little effort to incorporate into the family the cultural heritage of the adopted child (Adamec,136). This decision to leave the culture behind, outside the family, does not suggest that the child is neither accepted nor loved or cherished as their own. However, when the adoptive family also adopts and embraces the cultural identity of the child's birth culture, it enriches not only the adopted child but also the entire family and extended family as well. Another factor is attachment is the child’s age when they were adopted. The older the child when adopted, the risk of social maladjustment was found to be higher (Simon, 188). Most children when adopted at younger ages have a better chance to adjustment normally, than children adopted over the age of ten. An infant learns to trust quicker, than a ten-year old child does, but all of this depends on each case. Developmental theorist Eric Erikson, discusses trust issues in his theory of development. Erikson's first stage of development is “Trust versus Mistrust”, which states “if needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust” (Myers, 149). For an adopted child, placing the child early in a key ingredient to successful attachment of child to parent and vice versa (Cox, 1). Such an attachment, which is strong among the majority of families throughout the paper, is an important

Although the study is thorough in describing findings among those who are adopted from institutions, specifically orphanages, the study falls short of describing attachment patterns with children who are adopted at birth and had no experience with institutions. Therefore, I do not believe that the study conducted by Marcovitch et al. (1997) describes attachment among all adopted children, but it does describe how children who spend a considerable amount of of their first year of life in orphanages are more likely to have issues later in life since attachment theorist believe that attachment or lack thereof can affect cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). In fact, the outcomes of children who spend a majority of their early years in an institutional setting can be attributed to the “lack of an attachment figure” (Marcovitch et al., 1997, pp. 19).

Attachment theory proposes that the way infants and children form bonds with their primary caregiver have lifelong implications as to how they may form bonds with others, including their own children. This bonding is created through affectionate gestures, the ability to rely on the caregiver’s availability and willingness to fulfill the needs of the child, and the general feeling of safety when in the proximity of the caregiver. While the attachments begin as an infant they are malleable throughout life, and easier to form or transform the younger a person is (Strengths-Based Generalist Practice A Collaborative Approach, Poulin, 2010, pp. 580-581).Victoria was in foster care from birth and had not received the ideal responses required of her caregiver. In the case of Victoria she was relocated from placement to placement often, and experienced a variety of abuses and neglect, these characteristics are indicative of someone with an avoidant attachment style. Attachments may become avoidant resulting in the child’s reluctance to put themselves in a position to be forsaken repeatedly by the unapproachability of the caregiver (Dimensions of Human Behavior Person and Environment, Hutchison, 2015, p. 150). Victoria exemplifies this repeatedly throughout the book in the fact that she refuses to rely on any caregiver, in the specific case of her placement with Elizabeth she refuses to believe that there would be any permanency. “I did not believe there to be even the

In the last decade over 200,000 children were adopted internationally into homes in the United States (U.S. Department of State 2006), and many of these children were raised in institutions prior to adoption. Post-institutionalized (PI) children are at higher risk for behavior problems than non-adopted children reared in their birth families and children adopted from non-institutional settings (MacLean 2003; Rutter et al. 2007). Psychosocial deprivation characteristic of institutions, including frequent changes in caregivers, high child-to-caregiver ratios, and the lack of

This is the system, where the “immediate, face-to-face setting,” (Making Human Beings Human. p.96), take place. The adoptee is an active learned and as such he has direct interactions with peers, family, school, teachers, sports, music lessons, play- ground, neighborhood, and church. Here he forms social relationships. The parent’s parenting style play an important role. “Authoritative parenting, which relies on positive reinforcement and where the parents try to be more aware of the child’s feelings as well as capabilities tend to promote trust and a give and take atmosphere between the parent and child.” ( ) A child is more likely to develop trust with a parent who exercises both control and support which is shared in a study on “Making sense of adoption: Integration and differentiation from the perspective of adopted children in middle childhood.” In this study they discovered that families who addressed the issue of their differences before the adopted child entered school became a more integrated family. There was an honesty and plain communication as they discussed how their family was different from other families that were blood related. It was recognized that at the same time the adoptee had lost a family he had also gained a family. It was discovered that, “Adverse early

Collins, J. P., Brunner, J. L., Miera, V., Parris, M. J., Schock, D. M., & Storfer, S. (2003).

It is also unclear from this study whether adoptee mothers were more receptive and sensitive to their child?s behavior. Also, perhaps attachment is not a factor in determining whether infants will grow up to be well-adjusted children and eventually adults. A longitudinal study conducted on trans-racially adopted infants would perhaps help answer this question.Perhaps at 11 months of age, an infant hasn?t reached the point where he or she stops instinctually attaching.

Strange Situation is a laboratory procedure experiment where a dyad of a mother and her one year old child was placed in a room at a time with a stranger. Infants were encouraged to explore the room that was filled with toys. The three stages involved in the Strange Situation were exploratory, separation and reunion episodes. It was found that infants’ exploratory behaviour were at the highest with the presence of the mother. However, the absence of the mother will then discouraged exploration and thus, they will seek for reunion with the mother. Based on this observation, infant-mother attachment were put into categorization where infants that follow the expectations of Strange Situation has a Type B or a secure-based attachment. Meanwhile,

A clear relationship between caregiver-infant neglect and insecure attachment behaviours have been empirically presented for many decades (Crittenden, 1981; 1992; 1994; Crittenden, Partridge, & Claussen, 1991; Alessandri, 1992; Crittenden & Ainsworth, 1989; Dilalla & Crittenden, 1990; Wilson, Rack, Shi & Norris, 2008; Cerezo & D’Ocon, 1999; Fagan & Dore, 1993; Mash, Johnson & Kovitz, 1983, Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991; Ainsworth, 1964). In fact, primary considerations in attachment research initially focused on the experience of traumatic loss and early separation (Bowlby, 1969, 1973; 1980). Furthermore, inadequacies in mother-infant dyads in particular formed the basis of early attachment theories, whereby, pioneering expressions regarding the

In their 2007 study, van Londen et al. (2007) examined attachment patterns in post-institutionalized adoptees from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Colombia, and Ethiopia to determine if post-institutionalized adoptee populations experience higher rates of insecure and/or disorganized attachment than non-adoptee (NA) groups. To assess attachment in post-institutionalized adoptees, van Londen et al. (2007) recruited 70 adoptees from the aforementioned nations and their adoptive families via collaboration with three Dutch adoption agencies. Only traditional two-parent families for whom the adopted infant was their first child were accepted into the study (van Londen et al., 2007). Further, all adoptees must have been placed with their adoptive families prior to 12 months of age and must have lived with their adoptive families for a minimum of four months prior to participation in the study (van Londen et al., 2007).

In many studies it is shown that many adopted children frequently have significant histories of deprivation, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or pre-natal drug abuse (Yemm 555). Children that are up for adoption, both in the United States or internationally, are all at risk of being exposed to some form of abuse (Yemm 555). Although child abuse was practiced in orphanages, it wasn’t the only thing that the children faced. For a child growing up in an orphanage, they often feel resentment against their biological parents for either abandoning them or for dying. Although, in the dying case, it is illogical to feel the emotion of resentment towards someone who had no control over the event, it is quite common and it leads to later problems in life