Bonding and Attachment: Part I

For the past ten years, I have worked with families who have adopted children. For one reason or another, their child has failed to bond. In this article and several that will follow, I will share with you some of my clinical observations, opinions, and conclusions. They are based upon years of working with literally hundreds of children and their families.

Increasingly, more and more is being written about bonding and attachment. What is attachment? Bonding or attachment refers to the emotional connection or the strength of the relationship between one person and another. Usually it is between a child and his parents. In this article I will refer to attachment as the capacity of an infant or child to form a close, trusting, and loving relationship with his mother and father. In professional circles, when a child or baby has a problem attaching or bonding to his parents, it is called a Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). As the name implies, difficulty with bonding is a reaction to something that child has experienced.

What causes a child to have difficulty attaching to his parents? If a baby is traumatized early in life, it usually affects his ability to bond. The extent of the baby’s difficulty depends on the severity of the trauma.

One group of children who are traumatized are those who become available for adoption. Every baby who becomes available for adoption has experienced some trauma. The most common trauma they can experience is the loss of their relationship to their birth mother. Over the past ten to twenty years, there has been growing evidence that a strong or significant bond exists at birth between the infant and his birth mother. This bond develops during the nine-month period the child was inside his mother. When the baby is born, he already has a bond with his birth mother. In my experience, besides food and air, nothing is more important to a baby’s survival than his mother’s love. When the love from his relationship is lost, regardless of the reason, the bond is broken and the baby is adversely affected.

Many babies, who are adopted at birth or shortly thereafter, bond to the adoptive parent or mother without any problems. Others do not. We do not clearly know the reasons why. We also don’t know how frequently this occurs. Based on my clinical experience, my estimation is that it occurs in 10-30% of infants adopted at birth. If other harmful experiences, such as neglect, abandonment, abuse, or multiple placements are added to the loss of his birth mother, the resulting damaging affects are compounded. The more severe the problems in the relationship with the birth parents, the more difficult it will be for the child to receive and give love to the new adoptive parents.

For years, little was known about bonding. RAD as an emotional disorder was not even identified. Even now, many clinicians and most parents have not heard of RAD. In the past and sometimes today, when adoption agencies placed babies or children, bonding or attachment and the possible problems that could arise in this area were not taken seriously enough. Too often, parents and agencies believed that if a baby or child were placed with loving parents, all would go well. We all know that babies need and want love. Adoptive parents are motivated to nurture and love their adoptive babies. Consequently, it should be a perfect match. Unfortunately, anyone who works with adoptive families knows that too often something goes wrong.

What goes wrong when an adoptive child fails to bond? Let me share my perceptions based on my experience. In a few rare instances, I have seen adoptive parents who are not very loving and capable parents. When parents are unable to love well, then it is understandable that a baby is not able to bond. In my clinical experience, however, this has been rare. In most families, what I have observed is that the adoptive parents give the child more than sufficient, high quality love. But something still goes wrong.

Credits: Used with permission from:

Walter D. Buenning, Ph.D.
1773 S. 8th Street, Ste. 202
Colorado Springs, CO. 80906
(719) 477-9033

Dr. Buenning has a private practice in Colorado Springs. Prior to working with adoptive families, he worked for twenty years in mental health centers in several Western states.