Cultural variations in attachment

Studies of cultural variations

Cross-cultural similarities:

Tronick et al (1992) studied an African tribe, the Efe from Zaire who live in extended family groups. The infants were looked after and even breastfed by different women but usually they slept with their own mother at night. Despite such differences in childbearing practices the infants, at six months, still showed one primary attachment.

Cross-cultural differences: 

Grossman and Grossman (1991) found that German infants tended to be classified as insecurely rather than securely attached. This may be due to different childbearing practices. German culture involves keeping some interpersonal distance between parents and children, so infants do not engage in proximity-seeking behaviours in the strange situation and thus appear to be insecurely attached.

Conclusions: The studies suggest that, despite the fact there are cultural variations in infant care arrangements, the strongest attachments are still formed with the infant's mother. The research also shows, however, that there are differences in the patterns of attachment that can be related to differences in cultural attitudes.

Meta-analysis:

Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) conducted a meta-analysis of the findings from 32 studies of attachment behaviour. Altogether the studies examined over 2000 strange situation classifications in eight different countries, a larger sample of data then previously examined. Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg were interested to see whether there would be evidence that inter-cultural differences did exist i.e. differences between different countries/cultures. They were also interested to find out whether there were intra-cultural differences - differences in the findings from studies conducted within the same culture. With reference to variation between cultures/countries, Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg found that the differences were small. Secure attachment was the most common classification in every country. Insecure-avoidant attachment was the next most common in every country except Israel and Japan. 

With reference to variation within cultures, they found that this was 1.5 times greater than the variation between cultures. This conclusion to be drawn from this meta-analysis is that the global pattern across cultures appears to be similar to that found in the US. Secure attachment is the 'norm' - it is the most common form of attachment is 'best' for healthy social and emotional development. These cross-cultural similarities support the view that attachment is an innate and biological process.