Emotion Socialization and Attachment in Russian Children's Homes

Abstract

This article examines trends in emotion socialization in Russian children's homes ( detdoma) between 1996 and 2002, with a focus on attachment socialization. It examines the shift between different emotion socialization practices such as ‘toughening attachment’ (purposively non-responsive childcare in institutions) and ‘trading children for childhood’ (the framing of inter-country adoption as the exchange of Russian children to Western adoptive parents for the children's chance at economic success and emotional development). It argues that two central features shaped detdoma workers' attachment socialization of children in the 1990s: the perceived need to 1) socialize children's attachment in an attempt to establish economic and emotional security for children in uncertain times after the fall of the Soviet Union; and 2) shape children's understandings of attachment within transnational contexts as child migration to the West increased over the course of the decade. Investigating attachment socialization within Russian children's homes immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrates the role of cultural norms, economic transition, and political ideologies in shaping emotion socialization over time. It also highlights how economic and political transition impact taken-for-granted assumptions within child development literature about what constitutes attachment and child love, family or kinship, and domesticity – particularly, parent–child interaction models of emotion socialization.