Attachment, Adoption, and the Connection Between Food and Caring

What are the deeper layers of the connection between attachment and food? This is a fascinating conversation with Deborah MacNamara, PhD, author of Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for Our Kids (and everyone else we love), for anyone dealing with digestive or attachment issues—which is, likely, all of us.

“If food is not served in the context of togetherness, then it serves emotional distress and can’t be digested well. The whole system isn’t primed and ready to focus on nutrition; it’s focused on solving an emotional problem. This doesn’t mean parents aren’t trying; it’s what the child is experiencing.”

Our conversation covers:

• How we can show our caring through food, to help our children depend on us and show that they’re on our radar.
• Why the developmental approach is so important to our understanding of adoption, to look at dependence and vulnerability rather than behaviors.
• What Maslow’s hierarchy missed and why Maslow missed it.
• How both adoptive parents and birth parents can nourish the adoptee through relational radar.
• Kelsey’s connection to Grandma Peggy’s carrot cake.