Please address the following three questions. Please use assignment template which is attached.
Q1: As noted in the reading, Marcovitch et al. (1997) found relatively low rates of secure attachment among children adopted from Romanian orphanages and their adoptive mothers. Specifically, they found that 30% of the adopted children were securely attached, compared to 42% of a comparison sample of biologically related (raised at home) mother-child pairs.
Note, however, that the authors do not provide a comparison sample of children adopted at birth (i.e., non-institutionalized). Does this finding reflect something about adoption in general, or does it reflect something about institutionalization of infants?
Use this finding as an opportunity to reflect on your own beliefs and biases. Would you expect that adoptive children and their mothers would show different attachment patterns than children raised at home with their biological parents, assuming other variables (e.g., age and socioeconomic status of parents) are held constant? Would you predict adoptive parents to be more responsive to their children, less responsive, or equally responsive? After you consider and record your own beliefs, you may want to make a search of the literature on this topic to review some empirical data.
Q2: The reading also cites a study by Chisholm et al. (1995) that indicated that children who had lived in an orphanage for at least 8 months had lower scores on attachment security measures than did children who were adopted before 4 months of age.
How might this finding be related to the development of separation anxiety and fear of strangers?
Q3: Using the intergenerational transmission of attachment presented in Chapter Four, please discuss the transmission sequence as it apples to the case of Angela (page 165). Describe two interventions you would suggest to help members of this family.
For Question 1- Use the Marcovitch article
For Question 2 - Chapter Four & 3 year follow up article
For Question 3 - Powerpoints & Readings