Home Visiting Program for Immigrant Mothers and Infants with Anxious Attachment
OVERVIEW
This home visiting program for Spanish-speaking, immigrant mothers, and their 12-month old infant children, with anxious attachment aims to alter attachment between the mother and her young child from anxious to secure. Anxious attachment can arise when a mother is unresponsive to her infant’s specific characteristics and needs. The insensitivity eventually creates negative expectations in the child, which may exacerbate the mother’s own negative emotions. Positive impacts after a year of psychotherapy were found for mother’s responsiveness to the child and her involvement with the child, and the child showed less angry behavior, less avoidance, and more eagerness to see his or her mother. However, no significant impacts were found for security of attachment, holding back emotion, or child rearing attitudes.
DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM
Target Population: Mothers with anxious attachment to their 12-month old children.
Visitors trained in psychology or social work (and holding a Master’s degree) come to the mother’s home once a week for about an hour and a half. In addition, they call the mothers once a month. Visits are unstructured, but the home visitor gives information in response to the mother-child interaction. They provide developmental information as the pair interacts. Furthermore, the visitors aim to instill a positive feeling in the mother toward the child by helping the mother reconcile negative feelings that may arise. The mothers may discuss any ambivalent or angry emotions they had toward those around them, especially their child, and the kinds of intentions they believe the child has. For example, a mother may feel that her baby threw his or her toy on the ground on purpose to frustrate her. This kind of thinking can engender resentment and anger towards the child. To interrupt this cycle, the home visitor teaches the mother more developmentally appropriate expectations, which help her to identify needs and thus to respond to the baby. Aside from learning how to recognize her child’s needs, the mother learns to recognize her own needs, such as safety and protection. The program also provides material goods as well as access to services. The program lasts one year, ending soon after the child turns 24 months.
EVALUATIONS OF PROGRAM
Lieberman, A. F., Weston, D. R., & Pawl, J. H. (1991). Preventive intervention and outcome with anxiously attached dyads. Child Development, 62, 199-209.
Evaluated Population: One hundred Chicana and Latina mothers were evaluated with their one-year-old children. The mothers’ ages ranged from 21 to 39 years of age and they had all been in the United States for fewer than five years. All mothers had five or fewer children. Forty-four percent of the children were male and 52 percent were the firstborn. Eighty percent of the fathers lived at home. Forty-four percent of the fathers and eight percent of mothers worked full-time. Three out of every four families shared living space with other people.
Approach: Baseline measures were assessed through a home visit, then a separate visit soon after where the mother and child participate in a videotaped session. The mother filled out several survey instruments as well. Using the videotaped and self-report survey data, the researchers placed mothers into secure attachment, anxious attachment, or other attachment categories. Fifty-nine mothers with anxious attachments were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control group.
At post-test, the mothers and their children participated in a taped, 1.75 hour session. Ten minutes of taping were an introduction to the procedures. The mother and child then played for about 20 minutes. Then a female stranger played with the child in the mother’s presence (20 minutes). Then the child was asked to entertain him- or herself while the mother and stranger talked (20 minutes). For ten minutes, the child was separated from his or her mother with the stranger still in the room. Then a five-minute “reunion” took place when the mother returned and the stranger left. The mother, child, and observer then took about ten or fifteen minutes and ate snacks together.
At post-test the video and survey instruments were used to measure maternal responsiveness, involvement, and maternal child-rearing attitudes (encouragement of reciprocity, control of aggression, and awareness of complexity in child-rearing). Measures for the child were restriction of affect, angry behavior, behavior on reunion, avoidance and resistance, security of attachment as measured by a Q-sort, and maternal child-rearing attitudes.
Results: Positive, significant impacts with mothers were found for empathic responsiveness and involvement.
Positive, significant impacts with children were found for angry behavior scores (scores decreased), eagerness and reciprocity in mother and child to be together at the reunion phase of the videotaped session, and avoidance during the reunion (avoidance decreased).
No significant differences were found for restriction of affect, security of attachment, or maternal child-rearing attitudes.
SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION
References:
Lieberman, A. F., Weston, D. R., & Pawl, J. H. (1991). Preventive intervention and outcome with anxiously attached dyads. Child Development, 62, 199-209.
Program categorized in this guide according to the following:
Evaluated participant ages: Early Childhood (0-5)
Program components: Home visiting, Parent or family component
Measured outcomes: Behavioral Problems, Social and Emotional Health
KEYWORDS: Toddlers (12-36 months), Males and Females (co-ed), Hispanic, Latino, Home-based, Home Visitation, Parent Training/Education, Parent/Family Component, Other Behavioral Problems, Other Social/Emotional Health.
Last Updated on 9/20/10
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© Child Trends 2004 |
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