Abstract

Summary. The object of this study is to test the change of the internal working in lateadopted children taking into account the role of the security of attachment in the adoptive mothers. We assessed the attachment in 16 adoptive dyads and 12 biological dyads at two different times: T1 within 2 months from adoption and T2 six months after T1. We found out that there is a change towards security of attachment more in the adopted children than in the not-adopted children; moreover even if this result is not significant from a statistical point of view, we found out that there is an increase (from T1 to T2) in the concordance between the attachment model of the adoptive mothers and the attachment behavioural patterns of the late-adopted children. There is also a significant trend in the association between the attachment model of the adoptive mothers and the attachment representations of the adoptive children.