“Longing for Attachment with Mama”: Retrospective Accounts of Foster Care Alumni's Attachment Styles with Biological Parents

Background and Purpose:  Child welfare policy and practice have increased efforts to move youth from foster care into legal permanence through adoption, guardianship or placement with relatives.  Ostensibly, state-sanctioned permanence transmutes into psychologically meaningful caregiver-youth relationships that endure into adulthood.  However, attachment research posits that youth involved in the child welfare system are likely to have disrupted or otherwise challenged early relationships with birthparents that can pose difficulties for successfully developing meaningful relationships with subsequent adoptive parents, guardians, or relative caretakers.  Yet, little research has focused on youth who achieve permanence and their birthparent-youth relationships before foster care. This paper classifies former foster youths’ attachment styles to birthparents and seeks to understand how they make meaning of their early birthparent experiences before foster care placement.

Methods:  Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 31 young adults (average age 27 years old) who exited foster care (average age 15 years old) through adoption (32.5%), guardianship (35%), or kinship placement (32.5%).  Interview questions focused on young adults’ retrospective accounts of early childhood relationships with their birthparents before foster care placement.  Interviews were coded using the Adult Attachment Interview (Main, 1991), which classifies attachment into one of four styles (secure, unresolved, dismissing, or pre-occupied) based on young adults’ memories relevant to loss, separation, rejection, and trauma with their birthparents.  Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to explore how participants ascribed meaning to their early attachment to birthparents.

Results: The majority (84%) of the participants resided with their birthmothers or maternal relatives (16%) before foster care placement.  Participants reported being placed in foster care due to neglect (71%), typically related to maternal substance use or mental illness and 29% reported being placed in foster care because of physical and/or child sexual abuse.  The participant rate of attachment classification to birthmothers was unresolved (45%), dismissing (39%), secure (13%) and preoccupied (3%).  By contrast, rate of attachment classification to birthfathers were unresolved (85%) and dismissing (15%).  Six participants’ attachment styles were not classified because they reported having no relationship with their birthfather before being placed into foster care. None of the participants met the criteria of a secure or preoccupied attachment style with their birthfathers.  Thematic analysis revealed an overarching theme of “longing for attachment with mama” and four sub-themes, which include belonging to no one, conflicted relationships, unmet emotional needs, and the absentee father. 

Conclusions and Implications:  The research findings have implications for child welfare policy and practice, which assumes disrupted attachments yet seldom addresses foster youths’ pre-foster care attachment experiences with birthparents when developing permanency plans.  Indeed, attachment theory would suggest these early experiences are critical in shaping later emotional bonds with future caregivers.  Child welfare practice must include a concerted effort to assess pre-foster care attachment to birthparents early in a youth’s tenure in foster care, and communicate to caseworkers, therapists, birth, foster and adoptive parents or guardians to facilitate the opportunity for youth to adequately heal and develop health attachments later in life.