Attachment, family relationships and the importance of siblings

1. Attachment, family relationships and the importance of siblings Dr Sarah MaresNovember 2004

2. Conference Themes • Individual resilience • Whole of family approach • Not reinventing the wheel • Can attachment theory, knowledge about sibling diversity and relationships and family systems theory contribute anything?

3. Tolstoy • All happy families resemble one another but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way • Anna Karenina 1875-7

4. Adversity is not an equal opportunity experience

6. Siblings share on average 50% of the same genetic material Contribute to identity formation and life storyshared origins,

7. Longest relationships

9. Family stories and myths • Based on expectations and experience, • Influenced by trans-generational memories and stories • Influence the roles individuals have in a family • More or less flexible or fixed

10. andfamily “niche” or role

11. The importance of sibling relationships? • Protective factor during family separation or other adversity • Commonest request of adoptee is to trace siblings • In older age those with sibs have • Higher life satisfaction and lower rates of depression • Provide emotional and practical support despite physical separation

12. Attachment Theory- identity development, resilience and family relationships

13. Experience dependent maturation of the brain • Development occurs in the context of care giving relationships • Rapid brain growth in early years is due to increasing neuronal connections • A pruning back or consolidation of brain “pathways” occurs as a result of social interactions and experience

14. Neurochemistry of Attachment • Endogenous opiods released with mutual gaze • Regulation of dopaminergic and serotinergic systems • Regulation and development of Autonomic nervous system • Brain - Brain regulation of arousal and affect

15. Being meaningful to someone important is what a young child strives for from the first protoconversations” (Trevarthen 2001 pp118)

16. John Bowlby andAttachment Theory – an integrative theory • Developed out of psychoanalytic theory, evolutionary theory, ethological observations, cognitive developmental and other infant research • Attachment : An enduring emotional bond characterised by a tendency to seek and maintain proximity to specific figure(s) particularly when under stress • Primary biological function

17. Marvin Cooper Hoffman and Powell 2002 “The Circle of Security Project” Attachment and Human Development 4, 107-124

18. Felix Vallotton Le Ballon 1899

19. Attachment Theory – an integrative theory cont • Parental protection acts as a provider of vital support and external emotional regulation for the young child • Maternal sensitivity and infant attachment security are linked to subsequent social competence • Children develop a hierarchy of attachment figures

20. Attachment theory • From early experiences with attachment figures we develop Internal Working Models of self, others and relationships that influence social competence, parenting style,partner choice, and responses to grief and loss

22. Attachment Theory( Holmes 2001) • Universality hypothesis: all cultures • Normality hypothesis: 70% secure • Sensitivity hypothesis: attachment security is dependent on sensitive and responsive care-giving • Competence hypothesis: Social and emotional competence predicted by attachment security • Continuity hypothesis:patterns persist and impact over the life span

23. Secure Integrated Avoidant Cognition> affect Ambivalent Affect>cognition Disorganised Not integrated

24. Attachment classifications – community samples INFANT • Secure 55-70% • Insecure • Avoidant 20-30% • Ambivalent 5-15% • Disorganised 10- 18%

25. Disorganised Attachment • 18 % controls- up to 82% high risk sample • Children exposed to parents who are frightened or frightening • Parent or carer as source of child’s distress • Conflicting impulses to seek comfort and closeness and to avoid further distress • Disorganised pattern in infancy becomes increasingly controlling behaviour with age • General risk factor for maladaptive behaviour • In combination with peer rejection, predicts later conduct disorders, delinquency, personality disorder

26. It seems to me the family is often thought of as a structure maintained by the parents, in terms of a framework in which children can live and grow. It is thought of as a place where children discover feelings of love and hate and where they can expect sympathy and tolerance as well as the exasperation which they engender. But what I have to say has to do with my feeling that the part played by each child in the function of the family, in respect of the children’s encounter with disloyalty, is somewhat understated. DW Winnicott 1986

27. There has been little systematic research into siblings as attachment figures.M Salter Ainsworth 1991

28. Why? • Family relationships are complex to study • Attachment theory developed initially as a response to the inner drive/conflict model of development that characterises psychoanalytic thought • The focus was on the bonds that develop as a result of the care and protection provided by a parent figure. • It was only later that meaning and shared enjoyment were also acknowledged as central.

29. Attachment TheoryJ Bowlby “A Secure Base: Parent-child Attachment and Healthy Human Development Basic Books NY 1988 pp121 • The capacity to make intimate emotional bonds with other individuals, sometimes in the care seeking role and sometimes in the care giving one is regarded as a principal feature of effective personality functioning and mental health. • Exploring the environment, including play and varied activities with peers is seen as the third basic component and one antigenic to attachment behaviour’

30. identityincluding gender identity, securityand continuityplay and shared experience sibling relationships

31. Shared Identity

32. Birth Order • Controversial research

33. There is evidence that sibling relationships meet attachment needs and can promote resilience during adversity

34. Following separation from parents Distress is alleviated by a sibling ….and some comfort is obtained even when the sibling is only 2 years old and the younger of a pair……. Inanimate objects, such as favourite toys and personal clothes are also known to provide some measure of comfort.” John Bowlby “Attachment Separation and Loss” 1973

35. …..Indeed this role may actually help the older sibling to feel more secure himself, whether because care giving makes him feel less helpless, because it diverts him from his own feelings of distress or grief. M Salter Ainsworth 1991

36. Siblings, family separation and reconstitution • More emotional intensity (affection and quarrelling) in biologically related sibs • New step sibling overall rated as a positive event • Sibling negativity a factor predicting increased externalising problems

37. “Well being and the enjoyment of life depend on how private experience is built into memories of events that have been shared”(Trevarthen C 2001)

38. Impact of a new sibling • The birth of a brother or sister must in itself involve a major shift of a symbolic kind – a change in the child’s conception of themselves within the family, and indeed of himself as a person. …. The baby as a person with wants, intentions, likes and dislikes, with rights, possessions and gender; as a rival for the attention, love, approval and disapproval of the parents.” • Dunn and Kendrick 1982 p 56

39. Elizabeth Jolley “My Sister Dancing” “Children are not produced essentially as gifts for each other; but since they come like gifts, unasked for, very often as surprises to the existing children, as something special to be kept and not broken and discarded, I suppose it is true to say that there is not gift that quite equals the gift of a sister born when you are ….. still holding a precious first place in the household. Even the displacement, which is bound to occur, provides a certain independence and an undisputed status, that of ‘the elder sister”. in “Sisters” ed by Drusilla Modjeska. Angus and Robertson Australia 1993

40. Impact of a new sibling • At first the older child will aim his anger at the parents for desertion. Then as the baby begins to get mobile and to get into his toys, he will find ways of torturing the baby in order to involve a parent in his rivalry. He will manage somehow….. No first child ever wants the invasion of a second child” Brazelton p 199 p375

42. Behavioural disturbance shown by first born in response to birth of baby is related to: • age and gender of first born, • quality of interactions with parents • manner in which parent prepared first born for arrival. • It is a time when child’s attachment is vulnerable to change. Average security scores declined following the birth of the baby • 1st borns whose mothers reported more psychiatric symptoms showed a larger decrease in security. Teti et al 1996

43. Disruptions following arrival of the new baby • Physical health of mother or baby • Baby who arrives is not the baby who was imagined and expected • Parent who is traumatised , grieving or otherwise preoccupied

44. Regression, behaviour problems, jealously in children under 5 yrs old is common

45. Birth of sibling and attachment securityBosso O 1985, Teti DM and Ablard KE 1989 • Children’s care of younger siblings is influenced by their existing attachment to their mother and that attachment to an older child reflects that child’s attachment status. • Securely attached siblings directed more positive and less negative behaviour towards the infant sibling at home and in the lab

46. Siblings and identity • Social learning theory suggests that we are most likely to copy a person we see as powerful, warm and loving.

47. Siblings and Identity (Atkinson MP 1989) • ….. when an individual feels bonded or connected to another, when no individual can be substituted and when the relationship is expected to be lasting. • These bonds are contingent upon interactions that enhance self esteem. They are formed when a person assimilates the qualities of another into his or her self concept

48. … because these bonds are expected to be life long, parents and children invest in each other and make commitments that are future oriented. • Parents and children are connected to and part of each others self concept • One reason family members interact throughout their lives is because they reciprocally provide information about each other.

49. Gerhard Richter Betty 1988 It is not always comfortable , the information that siblings provide to us about ourselves

50. Our identities are formed and maintained in relation to significant others • Qualities of the other may be internalised or borrowed • Disavowed parts of self may be projected • Siblings can be particularly potent triggers for strong and sometimes unwanted feelings because they are likely to be closely linked to our sense of ourselves