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Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is a psychiatric condition affecting children that is characterised by inappropriate and sometimes disturbing ways of relating socially to others, including parents. Relatively rare, RAD is thought to arise from a failure to form close attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood due to abrupt or prolonged separation, neglect, or abuse. The incidence of RAD in the USA increased in the 1990s as Americans began to adopt an unprecedented number of formerly institutionalised children from orphanages abroad and from within American child welfare systems. To help resolve the extreme behavioural problems exhibited by their children, many adoptive parents are now turning to a controversial but popular treatment: attachment therapy. In The Road to Evergreen, Rachael Stryker provides an in-depth exploration of the theory, implementation, and culture of attachment therapy as it is practised in Evergreen, Colorado, the centre of RAD treatment in the United States.
To understand RAD and the Evergreen model, Stryker conducted interviews with client families at an attachment clinic in Evergreen, other American adoptive families, participants in the Denver foster care system, and personnel at international adoption agencies and orphanages. At the centre of Stryker's analysis is the disjuncture between the ideal of family life and the reality of caring for formerly institutionalised children. Parents who have pledged to offer unconditional love are at a loss when children offer indifference, hostility, destructiveness, or outright violence in return. Stryker demonstrates that the Evergreen model, with its goal of emotionally rehabilitating adoptees to prevent their eventual exile from families, is an important component of a cultural logic for preserving adoptive family. However, the therapy does not always deliver the promised happy ending. Stryker's clear and balanced account of attachment therapy will be useful in informing and reforming both adoption practice and paediatric psychology.
"The Road to Evergreen features extensive interview data from adoptive parents, adopted children, and social service providers both in the United States and Russia. Rachael Stryker clearly gained the trust of these individuals, in many instances developing ongoing relationships that lasted for several years. She is obviously a gifted interviewer and does an admirable job of seamlessly weaving vignettes into the text. These rich interview materials are very effective and give the reader a real sense of the experiences of the people involved."
- Jean Schroedel, Claremont Graduate University
"The Road to Evergreen is an expertly written, ethnographically rich treatment of reactive attachment disorder (RAD). Rachael Stryker repositions RAD as more than a medical behavioral diagnosis; she argues that it is in fact a symptom of overwrought desires of private, nuclear kinship that revolve around children as emotional assets."
- Sara Dorow, University of Alberta
