Attachment
Cross-cultural Research
Because attachment theory is grounded in evolutionary biology, one of its core assumptions is that infant-caregiver attachment is a universal phenomenon. This assumption is controversial. At the very least, however, research from around the world supports the claim that all infants develop attachment relationships, secure or insecure, with their primary caregivers. Beyond this, there is considerable evidence that the number of children who develop a secure pattern of attachment is proportionately similar across cultures. In African, Chinese, Israeli, Japanese, Western European, and American cultures alike, most children, about two-thirds, are securely attached to their caregivers.
The proportion of children who are insecure-avoidant or insecure-ambivalent, however, varies across cultures. Consider that in Japan a higher proportion of children are classified as ambivalent and a lower proportion of children are classified as avoidant than in Western European and American cultures. Japanese infants, in fact, are more likely to be very upset during separations from their caregivers and less likely to explore the environment than American infants. Based on these data and using the Japanese culture as an example, Fred Rothbaum and his colleagues offered a critique of the universality of attachment that focused on cultural variations in caregiver sensitivity and child competence.
Rothbaum and his colleagues argued that caregiver sensitivity in Japan is a function of parents' efforts to maintain high levels of emotional closeness with their children, but that in the United States it is a function of parents' efforts to balance emotional closeness with children's assumed need to become self-sufficient. In fact, Japanese parents spend more time in close contact with their infants than parents in the United States. Regardless, most attachment researchers now agree that caregiver sensitivity is only one important contributor to attachment security. In all cultures, other factors such as how much stimulation parents provide their children, as well as child characteristics such as temperament, are likely to influence the development of attachment.
The link between attachment security and child competence has also received scrutiny from a cross-cultural perspective. Child characteristics that are associated with security in Western cultures, such as independence, emotional openness, and sociability, are less valued in other cultures. Attachment security may lead to social behaviors that vary across cultures but are nonetheless adaptive in context. For example, Japanese secure children may be more likely than Western secure children to depend on others to meet personal needs, because interpersonal dependency is valued in the Japanese culture. In other words, the characteristics of child competence may differ across cultures as a result of culture-specific pressures.
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Kathleen McCartney
Eric Dearing
Additional topics
Social Issues ReferenceChild Development Reference - Vol 1Attachment - History Of Attachment Theory, Three Main Propositions Of Attachment Theory, Mary Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth And The Strange Situation