Attachment & Human Development最新文献

Parental labour migration is a widespread phenomenon in developing countries across Central and Eastern Europe and may impact the emotional security of Left-Behind Children (LBC) due to prolonged separation from primary attachment figures. In Romania, official data estimate that nearly 58,000 children have parents working abroad. Parental migration has both positive and negative effects on children's development. This review examines the scope of the phenomenon and its psychological impact on Romanian children. A literature search was conducted across Web of Science, PubMed, SAGE, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, and Google Scholar for studies published between 2007 and 2024. Fourteen studies were included, highlighting psychological effects of parental migration on children's mental health and parent-child relationships. The findings are discussed through the lens of attachment theory. Further research is needed to understand the long-term consequences of such separations. The findings are relevant not only to researchers but also to institutions seeking to develop policies aimed at reducing parental labour migration or mitigating its negative impact on LBC.

As a result of the Department of Homeland Security's zero-tolerance policy (ZTP), over 5,000 children were separated from their parents at the U.S. southern border from 2017-2021, with over 1,000 still lacking confirmed reunifications. Separations also occur daily due to immigration raids, chaotic processing, and changing immigration policies. This article addresses the most fundamental question faced by families enduring such separations; how to mend attachment bonds that have been suddenly severed, especially within a population likely already traumatized. The paper begins by updating readers about separation in the United States and offers a concise summary of the consequences of child-parent separation. The paper then introduces Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) as an intervention for affected families. This paper also uniquely applies CPP to older children and provides three case examples of its use in treating separated families. Finally, the paper offers general suggestions for supporting these families.

When children are placed into foster care, they experience separations from their primary attachment figures. Visitations are often arranged to provide ongoing birth parent-child contact. These visitations are complicated, though, because young children typically show a range of confusing behaviors when reunited. Fostering Relationships is a brief intervention designed to enhance visitation for the child, birth parent, and foster parent. We examined the effectiveness of the Fostering Relationships intervention through single subject analyses. We examined whether birth parents followed their child's lead during visitation sessions significantly more than they did not follow their child's lead. Six of seven birth parents who received the Fostering Relationships intervention followed their child's lead significantly more often than not, whereas only one of four of the control parents did so. Results are preliminary, but suggest that Fostering Relationships may be a promising intervention for enhancing visitation.

This study examined if considerably different caregiving experiences in infancy influence socio-emotional development later in childhood. We included children aged 6-9 years who were, immediately after birth, placed in quality state-run institutions (N = 24) or quality state-run foster care with one family (N = 23). All children have lived in stable families since their adoption before 15 months of age. Children in the comparison group have always lived with their biological parents (N = 25). We found that the previously institutionalized group had significantly more behavioral problems, more dissociative symptoms, and lower empathic behavior scores than the comparison group. The previously fostered group also exhibited more behavioral problems and dissociative symptoms than the comparison group but, notably, significantly fewer behavioral problems than the previously institutionalized group. The findings underscore the beneficial role of foster care compared to institutional care and that quality and consistency of early caregiving play a crucial role in later socio-emotional development.

Infants depend on sensitive caregivers to develop secure attachments, and attachment-based interventions like Minding the Baby® (MTB), aim to support sensitive parenting in families at risk. MTB is an interdisciplinary home visiting intervention starting in the third trimester and continuing until age two. This cluster quasi-randomized trial examined the effects of MTB among 256 pregnant women at risk of adversity. No significant differences were found between MTB and care-as-usual groups on the primary outcome parental sensitivity at 12 or 24 months postpartum. Children in the MTB group exhibited significantly less withdrawal at 12 months (b = -0.17, CI: [-0.33, -0.02], d = -0.43), an effect not sustained at 24 months. For the remaining subscales intrusiveness, limit setting, involvement, compliance, dyadic reciprocity, and dyadic negative states, no significant differences were found between the groups at either time point. However, we observed significant within-group improvements in parental sensitivity and dyadic reciprocity in the MTB group from 12 to 24 months.Trial registration: The study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03495895) on April 12th, 2018.

Relational savoring improves parents' well-being but has seldom been tested outside of the United States. In Iran, discussing parenting difficulties is taboo, and there is less emphasis on the experience of joy in motherhood. This cultural variation underscores the need to examine the effects of relational savoring, which focuses on heightening positive emotion in the context of parenthood. In this study conducted in Iran, mothers of children ages 5 and under (N = 100) were randomized into the experimental (4 weekly relational savoring sessions) or control group (no intervention). Participants were assessed at pretest, posttest, and 2-month follow-up. Compared to control group mothers, relational savoring mothers had higher closeness to child and availability at post-test and 2-month follow-up. There were no differential impacts on parenting competence and sensitivity/responsiveness. This program can be effective in improving aspects of the mother-child relationship among mothers of young children in Iran.

Maternal childhood maltreatment is associated with child psychopathology in the next generation. One mechanism proposed to underly this intergenerational transmission is alterations in infant stress systems, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and limbic brain regions. McLaughlin and colleagues have shown that direct experiences of threat versus deprivation have different effects on brain development and need to be studied separately. However, human and animal studies generate contrasting predictions about how threat versus deprivation experiences might affect stress systems in infancy. The current paper reviews emerging findings from the Mother-Infant Neurobiological Development (MIND) Study regarding the intergenerational transmission of effects of threat versus deprivation and proposes a Developmental Salience Model of Threat to integrate findings in human and animal literatures. This model proposes that threat of lack of care poses the first survival threat across species and therefore is more salient than threat of attack for stress-sensitive brain regions in infancy.

Since the inception of attachment theory, parent-child relationships has been examined in different populations, including autistic children. Attachment in autistic children has been measured using inconsistent separation-reunion procedures, making it difficult to examine whether autistic children are more or less likely to develop a secure attachment compared to non-autistic children. This study aims to meta-analyze data from studies that have assessed attachment in autistic children using a standardized version of the Strange Situation Procedure. Using the CASCADE catalogue, we identified six studies (n = 202). Results revealed that 45.6% were classified as secure, 18.7% as avoidant, 8.5% as resistant, and 27.2% as disorganized, which was statistically similar to the proportions of attachment categories in general population. Moderator analyses revealed a higher proportion of secure attachment among older children and more recently published studies. Future research should focus on unifying methodological approaches to studying attachment in autistic children.