Cultural Variations in Attachment

Cultural variations in attachment

Tronick et al. (1992)

• They studied an African tribe who live in extended family groups. 
• The infants are looked after and even breastfed different women but usually slept with their own mother at night. 
• Despite such differences in childbearing practices, at six months, the infants still showed one primary attachment figure. 

Fox (1977)

• Studied infants raised on Israeli kibbutzim who spent most of their time being cared for in a communal children's home by nurses. 
• Attachment was tested in the Strange Situation with either the nurse or the mother. 
• Infants appeared to be equally attached to both caregivers except in terms of reuinion behaviour - they showed greater attachment towards their mothers. 
• This shows that the mothers were still the primary attachment figure despite the shared care. 

Grossman and Grossman (1991)

• Found that children infants tended to be more insecurely attached than securely attached - may be due to childbearing practices.
• German culture involves keeping interpersonal distance between infants and caregivers to discourage proximity seeking behaviours and thus appear to be more insecurely attached. 

Takahashi (1990)

• Studied 60 middle-class Japanese infants using the Strange Situation.
• Found similar rates of secure attachment to those found by Ainsworth et al. in the US sample. 
• However, Japanese infants showed no signs of insecure avoidant but high rates of insecure resistant attachment (32%).
• Response of Japanese infants was so extreme that for 90% of the infants, the study was stopped.
• Japanese infants are rarely separated from their mothers. It would explain…