Attachment can vary across culture, as demonstrated by Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg. One factor is that the norms, values and expectations of a certain country can alter the way a child is brought up and how they perceive not only the world around them but how they form relationships. Japan places an emphasis on interdependency and closeness, which as stated before are undesirable characteristics in the west.
Kessen (1975) studied the Chinese culture and saw that children are socialised according to society’s values – that of co-operation and support of independency and individualism, and that one should not wish to ‘show off’ one’s own achievements but rather to ‘serve the people’. The characteristics that these values create in children can directly create the type of attachment – although there is little research into the general attachments in China, a small study carried out by Hu and Meng in 1996 suggested that it was similar to Japan, 68% secure and 32% insecure.
Child rearing practises can also influence attachment type. Children in Israel are raised in a Kibbutz and tend to show a high percentage in the resistant category. The children raised via this method have little contact with their mother, and more with the caregiver at the Kibbutz. Israel’s attachment is 62% secure, 33% resistant and 5% avoidant. It can be argued that this method of day care causes the resistant attachment in children due to the absence of the mother.
Western cultures, such as the US or the UK, usually have a more traditional method of child rearing. It is common for the parents (specifically the mother, but the father can also be the primary caregiver as opposed to the mother) to take time off work to look after young children until they are old enough to go to a day school or nursery. This means that a lot of time is spent with the parents which can result in a secure attachment type. This technique is not specific to western cultures, in Japan and China the children stay with their primary caregiver (in Japan due to the culture and China due to lack of money or no available day care). China also has a single child policy so from this it means the only child gets the most attention from its parents.
The strange situation is a method devised by Ainsworth and Bell to measure the type of attachment that a child has formed. The experiment is setup in a small room with one way mirror so the behaviour of the child can be observed. Children who were involved ranged from 12 to 18 months old and were citizens on the USA.
The method contains 8 stages in which the experimenters observe a child’s behaviour. This is briefly what happens:
Parent and infant are introduced to the experimental room.
Parent and infant are alone. Parent does not participate while infant explores.
Stranger enters, converses with parent, then approaches infant. Parent leaves inconspicuously.
First separation episode: Stranger's behaviour is geared to that of infant.
First reunion episode: Parent greets and comforts infant, then leaves again.
Second separation episode: Infant is alone.
Continuation of second separation episode: Stranger enters and gears behaviour to that of infant.
Second reunion episode: Parent enters, greets infant, and picks up infant; stranger leaves inconspicuously.
In all the stranger enters on average eight times, more if the child is okay, less if it is showing signs of distress. Throughout the procedure the child is observed by a team of researchers who make notes every 15 seconds about proximity, interaction and contact behaviour.
To get more reliable results Ainsworth and her co-workers combined the results of several studies so that a total of 106 different child observations were included in the final report.
The observations made allowed Ainsworth to judge the child’s reaction to the following three variables:
Separation anxiety: how the child reacts when mother leaves
Stranger anxiety: how the child reacts to being alone with a stranger
Reunion behaviour: how the child behaves when mum returns
Ainsworth concluded from her observations that there were three types of attachment:
Secure
Insecure Resistant
Insecure Avoidant
Her findings showed that the distribution of attachment in the children was:
Secure – 70%
Resistant – 15%
Avoidant – 15%
Each of the three types displayed different behaviour to Separation anxiety, Stranger Anxiety and Reunion behaviour.
Subsequent studies that have used the ‘Strange Situation’ have found it to be reliable and valid. The reliability of the Strange Situation was demonstrated by Main et al in 1985. They tested babies at 18 months and then retested them at 6 years of age. They found that 100% of the secure babies were still classified as secure and 75% of the avoidant babies were still under the same classification. This checked for consistency over time. Ainsworth herself also tested inter-rater reliability which was found to be very high.
Some have argued that the strange situation only measures the relationship between the child and one other person, so rather than measuring attachment type it is simply measuring a relationship. However, Bowlby argued the case for monotropy, the idea that there is only one primary attachment figure and all others are of lesser importance anyway. If the test is a valid measure of attachment type then it should be possible to use its findings to predict the future stability of a child’s relationships. Secure attachments in childhood should result in more stable adult relationships.
It can also be said that the experiment had low ecological validity due to its lab settings. It is not often that a child and mother are put inside a sterile room for 20+ minutes and the mother to leave and a stranger to enter. Most mother’s tend to keep their young children with them at all times to ensure they are happy, safe and not doing anything they shouldn’t be.
In addition, the test was devised by Ainsworth in the USA using American children. The test is therefore culturally biased. Desirable attachments in the USA may not be seen as desirable elsewhere. Nevertheless the test has been used worldwide and used to judge infants in other cultures. This is an example of imposed etic when a theory, test or construct is created in one culture (usually Western) and is imposed it on the rest of the world. The strange situation also seems to exaggerate behaviours. Children over-react when placed in the strange situation so do not behave as they would normally in the real world.
Finally Ainsworth is criticised for over-simplification in her belief that children can be categorised into only three groups. Other studies have suggested that there big individual differences between children within in attachment group. Main suggested that a fourth category, “Disorganised” should be introduced as some children did not show any clear cut behaviours from one specific group or behaved differently each time.
The strange situation was constructed and carried out primarily in the US. This means it is culturally biased and has the US idea of what is right and not embedded in it – secure attachment and the values associated with it being the best. This means that you cannot apply it to other cultures (despite them doing so) as it does not have other cultures and perspectives in mind.
The experiment was observed by a group of people who wrote down what they saw. From this it can be questioned, what was definitely characteristic behaviour of one attachment type? It falls down to each individual observing the child to what behaviour they see, and as it is personal opinion it may result in misinterpreting the behaviour or incorrectly labelling it as an attachment that it might not actually be.