Home sweet home: The emotional construction of places

The social sciences have recently shown a revival of interest in space and place. In this “spatial turn” the place is seen as a “place-in-process” (Thrift, 2008) and as the emergent result of constant re-involvement processes based on the continuous re-definition and re-construction of its meaning. Moreover, elderly people's homes have acquired a renewed importance in the wake of an aging in place strategy in social and health policies. This study describes the processes of situatedness of place that occur during the widowhood. Involving ten older widows, our analysis identifies four distinct processes in the construction of the situated meaning of a place: ‘Heart displacement’, ‘The showcase of the self’, ‘Refuge’ and ‘Introjection of external spaces’.     

Predicting social adjustment in middle childhood: the role of preschool attachment security and maternal style

Children's social and emotional adjustment at age 8 were examined in relation to attachment security, parenting style, setting conditions, and social and emotional adjustment at age 4. Seventy-nine children participated in videotaped interaction sessions with their mothers and with unfamiliar peers at the two ages. Data were derived from videotape coding, mother questionnaires, and child sociometric ratings. Results indicted that internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and social engagement were related at the two ages. After removing the variance due to the relationship between child behaviors at the two ages, a comparison of mother-child relationship predictors indicated that attachment security at age 4 was the strongest predictor of internalizing problems and social engagement/acceptance at age 8, while maternal style was the strongest predictor of externalizing difficulties. Results point to the importance of both aspects of the mother-child relationship, and indicate that the nature of family and peer links may vary depending upon the specific social domain assessed.     

Protective factors against juvenile delinquency: Exploring gender with a nationally representative sample of youth

Youth's social bonds' with conventional social institutions (e.g., family and school) and parental management of youth's leisure time represent two dimensions of suppressants against juvenile delinquency. Using Multivariate regression, this paper assesses these two dimensions of factors simultaneously on youth's aggressive and non-aggressive delinquency, and examines if their effects are gender sensitive. Findings suggest that girls have significantly lower involvement in both aggressive and non-aggressive delinquency than boys. However, girls are disproportionately involved in non-aggressive delinquency. Parental monitoring protects boys and girls distinctively on aggressive delinquency; this factor has a more pronounced inhibitory effect on girls' aggressive behavior. This study elucidates that there is a gendered pattern in adolescent delinquency, and that gender moderates the effect of some protective factor.     

The impact of suspension on participation in school-based extracurricular activities and out-of-school community service

In recent decades, school suspensions have increased dramatically in the United States. To date, researchers have assessed the consequences of suspensions on adolescents' academic achievement, self-esteem, and psychological well-being. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between school discipline and youths' engagement on in-school and out-of-school activities. In this study, we investigate the relationship between suspension (i.e., in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, or both) and youth participation in extracurricular activities, both in-school and outside of school, using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002. Results suggest students who are suspended are less likely to participate in school clubs (e.g., student government, yearbook, band/choir), and are also less likely to participate in volunteer work/community service. This suggests the impact of school discipline extends beyond the schooling context. These results provide insight into how suspensions may function as a ‘pushout’ mechanism for youth by compromising their attachment to school.     

Representations of Attachment to Father in the Narratives of Preschool Girls in Post-Divorce Families: Implications for Family Relationships and Social Development

This study used the Attachment Story Completion Task-Revised (ASCT-R) (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990), a representational measure of attachment security, to examine characteristics of preschool-aged girls' narratives associated with portrayals of attachment to the father. The children's (n = 27) parents had been divorced or legally separated for at least 2 years, and they lived in the primary custody of their mothers. We had previously discovered that girls' responses to the ASCT-R differed from those of boys in unexpected ways. Whereas boys' representations of child-father attachment varied positively with teacher ratings of social behavior in child-care settings, the opposite was the case for girls. Girls who portrayed children's attachment to the father more frequently were rated lower in social competence, contrary to expectations. A more detailed analysis of responses to the ASCT-R suggests that girls' representational attachment behavior toward the father was associated with narrative representations of both parents as unavailable, family instability, and concerns for the father's well-being.     

Attachment-informed Supervision for Social Work Field Education

Supervisory relationships present a new population for the application of attachment theory, and conceptualization of attachment-informed supervision training offers a new direction for study. This paper presents an 8-month model of supervision training for social work field instructors of MSW students. The training’s design incorporates primary attachment concepts with an understanding of the supervisory working alliance and parallel process. An overview of the in-person and on-line pilot training is presented, including perceptions from the participants regarding the training’s usefulness. This training program has implications for effective social work field education, and recommendations are suggested for future attachment research on supervision.

The Bowl of Terror: A Case Study of an Adolescent Perpetrator of Sexual Abuse

This article describes a complex multimodal intervention with a family where inappropriate sexual contact had occurred between Taro and his younger sister Lara, when they were young children. The family presented to clinical services when Lara was brought to hospital with suicidal ideation, traumatic flashbacks and regressed behaviour at 13 years of age. Treatment involved multiple components: family work with all members of the family individual work with Lara, joint work with Lara and Taro, and finally, a brief intervention with Taro. This article focuses primarily on the therapist's work with Taro, the perpetrator of the inappropriate sexual contact. The Adult Attachment interview (AAI), a semi‐structured interview, was used by the therapist to assess Taro's developmental experiences and psychological functioning. Information from the AAI helped the therapist identify both the relationship factors that had contributed to the perpetration of sexual abuse and the self‐protective strategies Taro had come to use in order to elicit maximum comfort and protection from neglectful attachment figures. The therapist used the functional formulation derived from the AAI to structure a time‐limited intervention.     

Attachment Perspective on Marital Dissolution and Relational Family Therapy

Divorce or dissolution of a long-term intimate relationship is an event on the continuum of an individual’s experience of attachment injury that is reawakened and played out again in this process. An attachment injury means the experience of rejection and betrayal of trust at a critical time of distress when one is in need of support. By means of the case study method, the article presents a case of a female client dealing with divorce. The history of traumatic relations through a lens of attachment theory is presented, along with divorce as the reawakening of an attachment injury and its processing in a relational family therapy model.     

Emotional reactions to daily workload: The moderating role of attachment orientations

Attachment theory provides compelling theoretical grounds to expect that attachment orientations, i.e. attachment anxiety and avoidance, influence our emotional reactions to job stressors. In spite of that fact, the role of attachment orientations in attenuating or exacerbating emotional reactions to job stressors has been ignored by organisational researchers so far. The main purpose of our diary study, therefore, was to analyse, whether attachment anxiety and avoidance moderate our daily emotional reactions to daily workload. Additional main effects of attachment orientations on daily emotional experiences were also analysed. Multilevel analyses of diary data from 340 participants revealed moderator effects of attachment avoidance. In detail, global and co-worker-specific avoidance interacted with workload in predicting negative emotions. Regarding positive emotions, co-worker-specific avoidance interacted with workload. In addition, global attachment anxiety and avoidance were positively related to negative emotional experiences at work. The negative relationship between co-worker-specific avoidance and positive emotional experiences at work was significant by trend. Taken together, current findings demonstrate attachment orientations’ contribution to our understanding of interindividual differences in daily emotional reactions to daily job stressors, and in daily work-related emotions. In sum, they suggest highly avoidant employees as a risk group in the working population.     

Factors Affecting Attachment in International Adoptees at 6 Months Post Adoption

This pilot study examined the effect of five child and maternal factors on the attachment security of international adoptees at 6 months post adoption. Results from the sample of 22 adoptive mother-infant dyads showed that age at adoption, developmental status, length and quality of preadoption care, and maternal attachment representations were not significant predictors of child attachment status. The number of preadoption placements and the child's stress level did significantly predict attachment status, accounting for approximately 40% of the variance in attachment security. Number of preadoption placements uniquely contributed 14% of that variance (p = .007) while stress level uniquely contributed 12% (p = .01). Children who had fewer preadoption placements had higher attachment security; similarly, children who had lower stress levels had higher attachment security. Results suggest that consistency of preadoption care was more important than its length or quality. Further, the relationship between stress level and attachment security raises the possibility that a lower stress level functions as a protective factor for the developing attachment with the adoptive mother.