Peer-reviewed papers, practitioner briefs, and field reports from our research partners on attachment, relational repair, and family systems.
Research Collaborator
A peer-level research collaborator for everyone, not just our partners.
Synthesize literature, map the research landscape, generate research questions, critique a draft’s methodology, summarize notes, and polish prose — backed by Claude Sonnet 4.5 and shaped by birthright’s attachment-and-family-systems posture. Open to any signed-in member; billed at 1.5× passthrough — the extra 50% supports birthright Foundation.
Drawing on 14 years of clinical practice with adults processing childhood relational trauma, this brief offers four evidence-anchored co-regulation practices clinicians can introduce in the first three sessions. Each practice maps to a specific dysregulation pattern (hypervigilance, dissociation, somatic shutdown, anxious activation) and includes patient-friendly framings.
Attachment Patterns in Adoptive Families: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study
Imani Okafor, PhD; Sarah Mendez, MA; Daniel Thompson, MSW · Dr. Imani Okafor · 11/15/2024
We followed 312 adoptive families across the first five years post-placement. Children placed before age 18 months showed attachment-pattern outcomes statistically indistinguishable from biological-family controls by year 4 when caregivers received structured relational education in the first 90 days. Findings suggest that early relational intervention — not biological connection — is the dominant predictor of secure attachment in adoptive contexts.
