Mothering without a Home

Attachment Representations and Behaviors of Homeless Mothers and Children

By (author) Ann G. Smolen With Alexandra M. Harrison

Publication date:

29 October 2013

Length of book:

230 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9780765710048

Homeless women and their children who reside in a transitional housing facility or shelter have experienced multiple traumas and disruptions in their earliest attachments. These multiple, chronic traumas often result in disorganized attachment disorders, which, in turn, affect all future development. Although there are a dearth of programs and interventions that work with disorganized attachment disorder within the homeless population, there are few studies that explore the difficulties that homeless mothers experience in forming positive attachments with their children.

Mothering without a Home: Attachment Representations and Behaviors of Homeless Mothers and Children explores the attachment style of homeless mothers and its effect on the resulting attachment style of their children. Ann Smolen utilizes psychoanalytically informed interventions with the goal of aiding these women in developing a deeper capacity to understand and be attuned to their children’s emotional needs.

Foreword by Mary Davis
Introduction
Chapter One: Sara
Chapter Two: Three Cases
Chapter Three: Cathy: Giving the Child Back To Her Mother
Chapter Four: Mothering Without A Home
Chapter Five: Literature Review
Chapter Six: Project Findings
Chapter Seven: Understanding the Findings
Chapter Eight: Where Do We Go From Here?
Chapter Nine: Comments on Mothering Without A Home by Alexandra Harrison
Epilogue
Appendix A: The Strange Situation
Appendix B: Adult Attachment Interview
Appendix C: Participant Survey
Appendix D: AAI Classification System
Appendix E: Strange Situation Coding
Appendix F: AAI Data
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Authors

In this book, Dr. Smolen brings the full force of her psychoanalytic understanding to the clinical encounter with the most emotionally deprived and needy of human beings, homeless mothers and their children. She helps us understand the intergenerational transmission of profound emotional neglect and the role of attachment, empathy, mirroring, mentalization and appropriate responsiveness to bring about amelioration. All of this is demonstrated through moving clinical examples as well as in a research study. We are indebted to her for her empathy, understanding, and investment in this project that required dedication and tolerance of unbearable affect. In this multilevel approach, using individual treatment as well as mother-child and group sessions, play and video production, she demonstrates the benefit of a psychoanalytically informed intervention.