Cultural Variations in Attachment

• Van Izjendoorn and Kronenberg (1988) conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies using 8 countries, all investigating the patterns of attachment across a variety of cultures
• Simonella et al demonstrated that the proportion of securely attached children in Italy was only 50%, which was lower than expected and lower than the predictions formed across a variety of different cultures. The researchers suggested that these changes may be due to changing cultural and social expectations of mothers - more mothers are working and are choosing to use professional childcare to enable them to do so, thus decreasing the likelihood that their children will be able to form a secure attachment with a consistent primary caregiver
• Jin et al (2012) found that when the Strange Situation was used to assess 87 Korean infants aged 6 months old, the vast majority of insecurely attached children were actually classed as insecure resistant, as opposed to insecure avoidant. Therefore, since this pattern is similar to that of Japan, this suggests that similarities in child-rearing practices are influential in establishing patterns of attachment.
• weakness -

  The study may lack ecological validity. The study attempted to measure cultural variations in attachment through studying different countries. However, multiple different cultures can exist within the same country, and this cultural variation was unlikely to be acknowledged. This therefore suggests that van Izjendoorn and Kronenberg did not account for such differences and so are more likely to be studying differences between countries of attachment patterns, rather than culture.
• weakness -

  The Strange Situation has been criticised as being culture-bound, in that the sample was biased (only used American children) and so the findings are unlikely to be generalised to other cultures, such as collectivist cultures. This is an example of imposed etic because Ainsworth assumed that the stages of attachment she developed could be universally applied to all children across all cultures, whereas this is unlikely to be the case
• strength -

  The findings of van Izjendoorn and Kronenberg can be considered reliable due to the significantly large samples that they used i.e. 1990 children. This replicability increases the validity and faith in the conclusions drawn because it decreases the likelihood that the observed results were simply due to chance or a ‘one-off’