Because bonding has often been so vaguely defined, some misconceptions or myths have arisen, which sadly seem to serve the purposes of those expounding them. These myths about bonding need to be addressed and discounted.
MYTH ONE: No harm is done when an infant or small child is moved from home to home because they will not remember the experience later. False.
According to almost every expert, the initial year of life is critical in child development. The principle of primacy over recency applies. The earlier in life an event occurs, the more significant are its consequences.
The first two years of a child’s life are pre-verbal. Since early life experiences are not mediated and analyzed by words, they make a more generalized and lasting impression than later ones. Erikson (1950) posits that the lifelong attitude whether to trust or distrust the world is formed in the first year or two. If an infant’s mother is not there to meet basic needs, the baby’s whole world falls apart. If, however, a teen feels that his mother is non-responsive, he may figure that she has had a bad day and look elsewhere.
Infants generalize. If one important person leaves, they may well perceive that they are unlovable and that the world is not to be trusted. Separation and loss are hard for an adult, but they are catastrophic for a small child.
Child development can be compared to the ocean voyage of a ship from New York to Spain. A small navigational error made just short of the Spanish port might cause the ship to scrape the dock. That same error made in the beginning while leaving New York might cause the ship to miss the entire coast of Spain. The earlier a consequential event occurs in life, the more it determines later patterns of adjustment.
MYTH TWO: The child who has bonded well in one family is a “good bonder,” and will do well if moved to another family. This is totally wrong. Humans do not bond or love generically. They bond to this particular person in this particular place.
When first placed in a foster home, some children appear superficially pleasant and charming. The “honeymoon” may last as long as three months. This is the exact opposite of a healthy attachment. Entering a new placement, the pseudo-bonder exhibits the desired manners. The goal is not to form an emotional connection, but as a way to manipulate the new parents. Some psychologists and social workers have naively believed that multiple placements have taught children how to bond quickly and easily. In fact, experienced foster parents have learned to be wary of the child who comes on too quickly. Bonding always takes time.
Remember what was said earlier about the marriage bond? Suppose that you have been happily married for two years when the kindly well-meaning person in charge of your life announces, “You are such a good bonder that we have decided to move you. Tonight you are going to a different home with a different husband. It is a very nice place, and he is a wonderful person. You’re really going to like it there.” Crazy? No more crazy than telling a bonded foster child that he will do or be well moving to a new placement.
MYTH THREE: Bonding is a skill. Both parents and children can learn the skill of becoming “good attachers.” Wrong again. Learning good manners and how to get along pleasantly and superficially is a skill, but it is very different from bonding. True bonded relationships, in fact, may involve conflict and at times be stormy.
Bonding is more elemental than the skill of good manners. Bonding is what happens to normal people over time when they share meals and bedtime stories, chores and recreation, watch TV and play video games together, go shopping and to baseball games. Bonding is part of the process of living together. Bonding takes time and being together day after day.
In the past, foster parents in their training were sometimes counseled not to become too attached to the children given to their care. This counsel assumes mistakenly that bonding is something over which people have conscious control. Bonding happens to people who live together for a significant period of time. Frankly, one might question the caring commitment and emotional response of foster parents who did not become attached to the children in their home.
MYTH FOUR: Bonding can grow and develop through regular visitation. Wrong. People may become acquainted in that way but bonding is not likely to occur, only continuing frustration.
This is a common mistake made in an attempt to involve a latecomer in the permanency plan. The child may have already bonded to his or her long-term foster/adopt parents. Then a blood relative arrives late on the scene and makes known their wish to adopt. Visitation is ordered by the court to initiate a bonding process. Bonding, however, won’t happen that way and may only put the child through an unnecessary and sometimes painful game of peek-a-boo. Goldstein et al (1973) make clear that the psychological parent is not someone the child visits but rather the child’s primary and everyday caretaker.
A better solution than prolonged visitation to see “if it takes” would be to determine the forever parent first. If the court chooses the blood kin, then the child can be placed accordingly, and provided with a realistic opportunity for bonding to take place in the now permanent home.
Bonding can occur when people come together day after day in elemental ways and meet one another’s basic needs: for food, shelter, play, friendship, and love. This may happen laterally as in a mutually actualizing marriage. Or it may happen vertically as between parent and child where the partners fulfill different but still vital needs. The parents fulfill the child’s needs for food, shelter, and nurture. The child conversely fulfills the parents’ need for purpose, completion, and love. Bonding will not occur over a weekend or through afternoon visitations at a welfare office or fast food restaurant.
MYTH FIVE: Kinship comes first, no matter what or when. Not true. The words relative and related obviously have the same root. Blood is one way we are related, but bonding is another. The questions should be asked: Which relationships are most critical for this child? To whom is the child most closely related psychologically? These relationships need to be examined and compared, with the child’s best interests in mind.
White middle-class culture focuses narrowly on the nuclear family. Other cultures, notably our black and Hispanic communities, acknowledge the extended family network that provides physical, financial, and emotional support. The terms grandmother and grandfather, uncle and aunt, brother and sister are often applied to the persons who fill these roles. They may not be blood relatives but they are truly related in a substantive and vital and way. Questions like “Who is living in the home?” and “Who helps you out?” may help identify these bonded but non-genetic relatives.
The mistake in Myth Five is to assume that blood ties are the only ties, or that they are necessarily more vital than bonding.