Schaeffer's Stages of Attachment

• A weakness of the stages is that it does not take into consideration the differences in forming attachments in various cultures.

  For example, research has found that the closeness of attachment with mothers was almost twice as common in family-based sleeping arrangements compared to communal environments.

  Also, in collectivist cultures, where multiple attachments are the norm, it is believed that babies form multiple attachments from the beginning since families work together jointly in everything.
• This suggests that attachments may form differently in collectivist cultures and this undermines the stages of attachment theory as it may apply specifically to individualistic cultures which means this structure of forming attachments is not universal and so decreases the external validity of the theory.
• The theory may tell us less about how attachments develop in other cultures.
• Furthermore, the stages of attachment theory suggests that development is inflexible and so normally specific attachments come before multiple attachments. This is an issue because the stages become a standard by which families are judged and may then be classed as abnormal. Therefore, this questions the reliability of the theory as a measure of the formation of early attachment.
• In the asocial stage, young babies have poor coordination and are generally immobile. It is therefore difficult to make judgments about the infants based on observations of their behaviour and therefore research evidence cannot be relied upon as a strong support for the theory as previously thought.
• Another weakness of the theory is how an infant has formed multiple attachment, is assessed.

  Bowlby (1969) pointed out that children have playmates as well as attachment figures and may get distressed when they leave, but this does not signify attachment.

  This undermines the multiple attachments stage because observation does not leave a way to distinguish between behaviour towards secondary attachment figures and playmates.

  This suggests that the findings may not be a valid measure of multiple attachments.