<p> The twofold purpose of this study is to present the story of a Taiwanese Hakka family which had generational experiences of mother-child separation, and also to explore the impact of mother-child separation on second generation attachment representations. The mother-child separation of this Taiwan Hakka family is defined as having the experience of being either an “adopted child” or a “little daughter-in-law” in early childhood, which is generally termed tung-yang-xi (special characters omitted) in Chinese. Participants were recruited from a specific Hakka family with generational experiences of mother-child separation. In this research, the researcher uses the term <i>tung-yang-xi</i> to address both adopted child and little daughter-in-law. Three generations of <i>tung-yang-xi </i> participants were interviewed by the researcher to acquire their life stories. The second generation of <i>tung-yang-xi</i> were assessed for their attachment representations by the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP). All participants (28 participants) were classified as insecure. Six participants (21.4%) were classified as Preoccupied, eight participants (28.6%) were classified as Dismissing, and 14 participants (50.0%) were classified as Unresolved. There was no difference regarding the gender of participants nor the age when mother-child separation happened. The AAP revealed participants’ high tendency to adopt a “deactivation” strategy under emotional and relational dysregulation. The classification result and the analysis of defense process were consistent with the researcher’s hypothesis on the intergenerational transmission of internal working models. The researcher discusses cultural factors in understanding the attachment phenomenon among the Taiwanese Hakka population.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3743742 |
| Date | 17 January 2016 |
| Creators | Hsu, Pi-Chen |
| Publisher | California Institute of Integral Studies |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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