The Importance of Attachment for Infants

All of the things I wrote in the answer about the effects of separation on a newborn apply in a kind of multiplied way to a baby who is subjected to repeated separations due to foster care placement(s). A baby is biologically wired to seek to connect: it is a hard-wired impulse, just like the drive to nurse. As I wrote about extensively in the answer you reference, the disruption of biologically connected continuity that happens when a newborn is separated from her mother at birth (permanently, as in adoption, for an extended but temporary time as in a NICU stay, and even for a relatively short time due to hospital protocols) is a kind of shock, or insult, to the baby's system (and the mother's, by the way!): It interrupts the complex hormonal symphony designed to take place, involving intricate exchanges between the mother and her newborn child, all organized around their face-to-face engagement with one another. But an infant will certainly accept the care and caresses of an alternate caregiver; again, this is something that has evolved with us as a survival mode. Through human history, mothers have died in childbirth, and infants have depended on the care of others—usually someone closely connected to the family, or clan. Today, this role has been socio-legally dubbed foster care. The very term foster home strikes fear and loathing in the hearts of most people, conjuring images of Dickensian suffering for children. While it is true that there have been and continue to be foster care horror stories, it is also very true—though far less exciting for media coverage, and thus we rarely hear about them—that there are many wonderful, generous, loving foster mothers (and fathers) who have made critical differences in the lives of the children they care for. An experienced foster-mother caring for an infant bound for adoption can sometimes give that baby more in the way of fully present, open-hearted loving attunement than a fearful prospective adoptive mother, who may (consciously or unconsciously) be holding herself back from fully emotionally committing to that baby lest the birth mother change her mind and take the baby back. That kind of not-quite-there-ness on that subtle emotional/psychological level leaves the baby semi-abandoned in an insidious way that can have real lifelong consequences. (Let me be clear to say that this emotional distancing can also happen—and does, heartbreakingly often, for myriad reasons—in non-adoption situations; and by the same token, many if not most adoptive parents are able to be fully there, hearts wide open, for their new infants.) I would say that the clues to solving your mystery are to be found in your own relational repertoire: do you find it fairly easy to trust others, to let them care for you? Can you reach out and ask for help from others? Famed child psychologist Erik Erikson observed that the first psycho-social crisis in the long road to forging a self, occurs in the period of infancy, and involves the development of trust or distrust. If your needs as an infant (not just your physical needs, but your relational needs, for warm, attuned, affectionate presence) were met in a consistent enough way, your basic orientation is to indeed trust others at that core, person-to-person level. If you do, this tells you a lot about that foster care situation.