Santona Alessandra

• Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

Introduction: Several studies point to an association between minority stress, especially internalized homonegativity and the quality of the couple relationship. However, the dimensions of psychological functioning that might moderate this relationship seem to be scarcely explored. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the association...

Being an adoptive family member could be challenging, especially if the social context conveys unrealistic representations. In Italy, few studies explored socially shared beliefs about adoptive families. We investigated how adoptive parents and adopted children are perceived within the Italian context and whether attitudes toward adoptive and biolo...

Childhood maltreatment is a key precursor to vulnerable narcissism since it likely lead to a narcissistic injury that triggers defenses against rage and abandonment. In later life, this pattern may contribute to a maladaptive model of love relationships. The present study explored the association between different types of childhood maltreatment (i...

This study investigated how individualism, collectivism and conformity are associated with parenting and child adjustment in 1297 families with 10-year-old children from 13 cultural groups in nine countries. With multilevel models disaggregating between- and within-culture effects, we examined between- and within-culture associations between matern...

A new measure for assessing an individual's perception of the dyadic difficulties in emotion regulation with a romantic partner is tested. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale–Dyadic (DERS‐D) was obtained by adapting some items of the previous Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) to the dyadic context. The scale was administered...

Communicative openness (CO) defines the willingness of parents and children to explore the significance of adoption. Especially in the first year of adoption, CO could be challenging for adoptive parents, who are influenced by personal characteristics. Using a retrospective assessment, we investigated parents’ communicative experiences in the first...

Hikikomori is a severe form of social withdrawal increasing among the young Italian population. Hikikomori has been connected to psychological problems and high environmental sensitivity. Nevertheless, only a few studies have been carried out in the Italian context, and they did not analyze several aspects strictly related to the hikikomori phenome...

Il presente lavoro descrive alcuni aspetti emotivi e relazionali della condizione adolescenziale durante il periodo pandemico rilevati su 375 studenti tra i 14 e i 18 anni, che hanno partecipato a un intervento di prevenzione e promozione della sa- lute effettuato nelle scuole secondarie di secondo grado. I risultati hanno eviden- ziato che l'esper...

Infertility impacts several life dimensions. Among them, sexuality is particularly affected; yet studies have mainly focused on infertile women. We aimed to explore infertile men’s and women’s experiences in sexual satisfaction, internal control, and anxiety, and the relationship between attachment, dyadic adjustment, and sexuality. The sample cons...

A partire dall'inizio della pandemia causata dal Covid-19, per le famiglie con bambini, in particolare, si è verificato un drammatico flusso di eventi stressanti concorrenti. In particolare, il lockdown ha costretto genitori e figli a convivere nello stesso contesto condividendo scuola, lavoro, vita di coppia e familiare. Gli Autori hanno portato a...

A mother’s responses to her newborn and her confidence in the child’s caretaking depend on her attachment security, general parental stress, and perceived self-efficacy. However, few studies have analyzed maternal confidence in caretaking and how it is influenced by some mothers’ characteristics. We aimed to examine the association between maternal...

Same-Sex Intimate Partner Violence (SSIPV) among lesbian women has been underestimated until few decades ago. While the association between romantic attachment and SSIPV has been widely demonstrated, mechanisms that mediate this association and the complex relationships between romantic attachment, SSIPV, and SSIPV-specific risk factors have not be...

Adolescence is characterized by several transformations, such as identity construction, progressive estrangement from parents, relational interest in peers, and body changes that also involve sexuality issues. In this process, attachment patterns play a fundamental role in relationships, and when these are dysfunctional, they can result in internal...

Purpose To compare community girls at risk and not at risk for binge eating (BE) in attachment representations through a narrative interview and to test the predictive role of attachment pattern(s) on the risk of binge eating among community girls. Methods From 772 community adolescents of both sexes (33% boys) screened through the Binge Eating Sc...

One way in which intercountry adoptees can elaborate on their past history is through travelling to their country of birth. This article explores the memories and experiences recalled by a group of adoptees who visited their homeland after being adopted as children by Italian families. The sample comprised 34 participants aged between 12 and 40 yea...

Communicative openness within the adoptive family changes over time and helps the child explore his/her history. We aimed to evaluate whether adoptive families communicate about specific adoption-related themes from the beginning of their lives as a family. We created an instrument to track the communication process during the first year of adoptio...

La presente ricerca esplora alcune caratteristiche psicologiche presenti nei fratelli con funzione di caregiver di pazienti con gravi patologie psichiche. Gli autori si focalizzano su aspetti quali la percezione della relazione con le figure genitoriali, le esperienze traumatiche, i tratti di personalità e alcune caratteristiche psicosociali. Il ca...

Many Italian gay and lesbian individuals have the desire to become parents, despite the fact that they still face barriers due to the low acceptance of same-sex parenthood. This study investigates the desire and motivation of same-sex couples to have children. The sample consists of 31 same-sex couples (17 lesbian couples and 14 gay male couples) a...

Although conscious aspects of attachment representations can be effectively assessed in middle childhood, the few available self-reports are based on different operationalizations of attachment and do not always show adequate psychometric properties. The current study aimed to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Attachment in Mi...

Self-report questionnaires based on Harter’s response format (“Some kids . . . but other kids . . . ”) are commonly used in developmental and clinical research settings, but the reliability and validity of this format in middle childhood are still under debate. The current study aimed to test the psychometric proprieties of Harter versus Likert res...

The goal of the present study is to explore the perception of the relationship with parental figures, traumatic experiences, personality traits and psychosocial characteristics of the participant sibling caregivers. The sample was composed of 30 sibling caregivers recruited at psychiatric facilities in Italy, and of 30 control siblings. The battery...

Background A secure attachment style could promote more intimacy in romantic relationships, while an insecure attachment style could be correlated with less positive romantic relationships in adulthood. Numerous studies have noted that a secure attachment to parents was correlated with lower levels of aggression, whereas insecure attachments were a...

This study explored attachment networks in committed couples who differed in parenting choice and relationship status. Attachment networks were defined in terms of attachment functions, attachment strength, the presence of a primary figure, and full-blown attachments. Participants were 198 couples, married or cohabiting, either expecting their firs...

In this study, bullying is examined in light of the “prosocial security hypothesis”— i.e., the hypothesis that insecure attachment, with temperamental dispositions such as sensation seeking, may foster individualistic, competitive value orientations and problem behaviors. A group of 375 Italian students (53% female; Mean age = 12.58, SD = 1.08) com...

The authors discuss the issue of intergenerational transmission of parenting from an empirical and psychoanalytic perspective. After presenting a framework to explain their conception of parenting, they describe intergenerational transmission of parenting as a key to interpreting and eventually changing parenting behaviors. Then they present (1) th...

This study investigates Italian adolescents' attitudes toward gay men and lesbians and same-sex marriage, and their beliefs about the origins of homosexuality. The sample consists of 449 subjects (226 males), aged between 14 and 21 years. The principal instruments used are: the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay men (ATLG), the Modern Homonegativity...

This work describes the construction of family-couple-parenting (FCP) questionnaire, a new measure of three aspects related to the developmental path toward parenting choices, within the perspective of the family life cycle and attachment theory. Two studies are reported. Study 1 reports the development of the FCP questionnaire and its psychometric...

Attachment and caregiving are separate motivational systems that share the common evolutionary purpose of favoring child security. In the goal of studying the processes underlying the transmission of attachment styles, this study focused on the role of adult attachment styles in shaping preferences toward particular styles of caregiving. We hypothe...

Introduction: Recent literature has shown that the good outcome of adoption would mostly depend on the quality of adoptive parenting, which is strongly associated with the security of parental internal working models (IWMs) of attachment. Specifically, attachment states-of-mind of adoptive mothers classified as free and autonomous and without lack...

Internal working models (IWMs) of attachment can moderate the effect of maternal depression on mother–child interactions and child development. Clinical depression pre-dating birthgiving has been found to predict incoherent and less sensitive caregiving. Dysfunctional patterns observed, included interactive modes linked to feeding behaviors which m...

We present the results of a study carried out in Italy with 39 Italian couples seeking to adopt, aged between 35 and 45 years, and 39 matched non-adoptive couples which compared their attachment states of mind with respect to caregivers and partners and quality of couple relationship. Both partners of the couples completed individually measures of...

This study examined the psychometric properties of a newly translated Italian version of the Experiences in Close Relationships–Revised (ECR–R) Scale. The sample comprised 1,363 adults (906 women, 456 men, 1 unreported sex; ages 18–64 yr., M = 33.4, SD = 8.9; 84.4% reported being engaged in a romantic rela- tionship, 9.4% declared being single), al...

In line with the studies which have stressed the importance of security of attachment models to caregiver and to partner in biological parenthood, the aim of this study has been to investigate these constructs in seeking to adopt couples. 39 childless and seeking to adopt couples and 39 control couples, aged between 35 and 45 years, have been asses...

The empirical contribution presented in this paper aims to analyze the overall objective of the operation of a sample of preadolescents to highlight the spread of the conditions of emotional and relational distress in puberty and deepen the relationship between risk factors and behavioral difficulties, as well as to evaluate the impact of mental su...

This paper describes research investigating couples who undertook the procedure of becoming adoptive parents, studying the partners' representations of relationships in the context of their psychological sense of loss owing to infertility. The sample consisted of 100 subjects (50 couples) who took part in an assessment process related to adoption w...

Not with you, nor without you Love is attributable also to « inner objects », fantasy relationship of which each person is the bearer and which he/she tries to « enact » in the couple bond. When capacity of scanning of mental states of the self and the other (affect-attunement, Stern, 1985) fails, we may have two effects : a) damage to the capacity...

La Current Relationship Interview (CRI) di Crowell e Owens (1996) é un'intervista semi- strutturata messa a punto per esplorare il processo attraverso cui una nuova relazione d'attaccamento possa essere integrata all'interno di una rappresentazione dell'attaccamento già esistente, oppure portare allo sviluppo di una nuova e diversa rappresentazione...