* This invited chapter was authored by Shauna Wilton. Wilton is a political scientist in the Department of Social Sciences at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta.

* During the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues developed the Strange Situation (SS) experimental procedure (Ainsworth & Bell, 1974, 1977; Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1971, 1974; Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969) in order to assess an infant’s reactions to separation from her or his caregiver. As of 52 weeks of age (or older) the infant, his or her mother and an observer are brought into a laboratory designed to look like a sparse living room. At various times during the 20 minute session, the mother steps out of the room leaving her infant with the observer. At other times, both the mother and the observer exit the living room leaving the infant alone. What is of primary interest in assessing infant attachments styles are the ways infants respond to their mothers during the brief reunion periods.

* Definitions of “severe morbidity” include, for example, major obstetric hemorrhage, eclampsia, renal or liver dysfunction, cardiac arrest, pulmonary edema, acute respiratory dysfunction, coma, cerebro-vascular event (e.g., stroke), unremitting seizures, anaphylactic shock, septicemic shock, anesthetic problem, massive pulmonary embolism, intensive/coronary care admission , and/or, severe preeclampsia, eclampsia, HELLP syndrome, severe hemorrhage, severe sepsis, and uterine rupture (Furata, Sandall, & Bick, 2012).

* Bill C-38, the Civil Marriage Act, which was adopted on July 20, 2005, legalized same-sex marriage across Canada. Some provinces and territories had already legalized same-sex marriage, beginning in June 2003. Canada was the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, following the Netherlands and Belgium. Same-sex marriage is now also legal in Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, New Zealand, and France (Goldberg, 2013).