Being Borne: Contextualizing Loss in Adoption

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Notes

¹My thinking about this issue, presented in more detail in my 2010 article, builds on the work of Howard and Miriam Steele's (2005) “Friends and Family Interview” paradigm for measuring attachment in middle childhood. Their work, in turn, adapted the Adult Attachment Interview (Main & Goldwyn, 1995) for use with this age group by basing it on the developmental task germane to middle childhood, namely being able to organize a coherent narrative about their relationships to friends and family members. Children with insecure attachments gave responses that were less coherent than those of more securely attached children.

²Loss aversion, a dynamic that is often repeated compulsively throughout the lives of adoptees, is a defense against loss. Since it involves anticipation of future loss, it often creates relational difficulties and problems with managing the self in time (Pivnick, 2010).