THE RELATION BETWEEN COPING MECHANISMS AND ATTACHMENT STYLS TO ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

The abandonment, a problem that is known
worldwide met an unprecedented explosion especially in
poor countries and unclear political situations like
Romania.
According to the specialty literature research a large
number of studies regarding the development of
abandoned children has been conducted in our country.
The situations of children who come from disorganized
families in Romania have considerably deteriorated while
the number of abandoned children has progressively
grown. Furthermore, the life conditions in orphanage
institutions are sometimes insecure and do not answer the
optimized developmental needs of the children. A series of
studies that have been realized regarding the investigation
of the causes that determined children to end up in such
institutions refer to the abandonment and the children who
come from unorganized families and who are confronting
with several problems.
Among several disorders that can be found in children
who are institutionalized there are also disorders of
emotional attachment. Several studies regarding the three
types of emotional attachment (secure, avoidant, anxious)
have compared groups of children who were raised in
orphanages and groups of children who were raised by
their parents and the results pointed out the presence of
meaningful differences for all types of emotional
attachments, the children raised in orphanages being more
avoidant, more anxious and feeling less secure unlike
those raised by their parents. Furthermore the studies that
investigated the groups of teenagers raised within families
have discovered that the emotional engagement is
positively related to anxiety and rage and the coping
mechanism are less adaptive. Other studies have proven the fact that those children who start their lives engaging a
secure emotional commitment show a higher self-esteem
and they are using positive coping mechanisms while
those who engage a less secure emotional commitment are
likely to show less capability to difficulties.
In the specialty literature there are to be found
numerous studies that research similar concepts with those
presented here, but none of them have spoken about the
subject illustrated by this one. Therefore this study
represents the occasion to contribute in a small manner to
the knowledge of the presented problem and
simultaneously a starting point for other studies.