"Cross cultural research has demonstrated many similarities in infant attachment styles across different cultures" - To what extent are there cross cultural variations in attachment?

   Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg aimed to investigate cross-cultural variation in attachment types through a meta-analysis of research, which had studied attachments in other cultures. They compared only the findings of studies that had used the Strange Situation in order to draw inferences about the external validity of this as a measure of attachment to other populations (population validity) and other settings (ecological validity).

  A meta-analysis was conducted which compared the findings of 32 studies that had used the Strange

Situation to measure attachment and to classify the attachment relationship between the mother and the infant. Three examples of these countries are Germany, Israel and Japan; due to the different methods of child rearing in these countries there are differences in the proportion of children in each of the three categories that arise from the strange situation.

    In Germany 49% of children are rated as anxious/avoidant (Grossman et al. 1985). In theory German parents like to keep a greater inter-parental distance than American parents (which the strange situation is based on), they like a child that obeys and doesn’t question. Research has found that there is no evidence that the larger number of anxious/avoidant German children is because German mothers are unresponsive, indifferent or insensitive they merely value independent children that are self-reliant. To a German parent a secure American child would seem to be clingy and spoilt.

     In Israel the studies were carried out in Kibbutzim (Sagi 1991), collective farms with between 100 and 2000 members in each. The children spend most of the day and all of the night away from their parents; they are looked after by metapelets in children's houses. While the child is still breast feeding the mother will visit 4/5 times during the day to feed the child otherwise the only time when the families are together is for 2 hours in the evening after work for quality time. The children spend a lot of time with a large number of other children and because they are never exposed to strangers in the closed environment of the Kibbutzim a large proportion are rated as anxious/resistant.

   In Japan child-rearing appears to put greater value on developing close family relationships; young infants are rarely separated from their mothers and the mothers are highly responsive to their needs  (Miyake et al. 1985) In addition, greater prominence is placed upon allowing children to solve problems in groups and to identify their own group identity.  So when a Japanese child is left on its own in the strange situation it is very distressing for it and so a larger number of Japanese children are rated as anxious/avoidant

   The overall consistency in attachment types leads to the conclusion that there may be universal characteristics that underpin infant and caregiver interactions. However, the significant variations demonstrate that universality is limited. Implications include the linking of the variation in attachment to child-rearing practices. Also, the greater variation found within cultures suggests that sub-cultural comparison studies may be more valid than cross-cultural comparisons. The significant differences also question the validity of the Strange Situation.

   Bowlby (1953, 1988) claimed that infants need one special attachment relationship which is qualitatively different from all others (monotropy); Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that though infants did form multiple attachments, they appeared to have one primary attachment.  This and the other evidence suggests that, despite having multiple carers, the infants still had one special relationship.

In conclusion it is relatively easy to say that to a large extent there are cross-cultural variations in attachment as shown by the three examples from Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study. But the greater variation found within cultures undermines the cross-cultural research as it shows that it is wrong to think of one culture as a whole, and so cross-cultural comparisons based on this assumption lack validity. It is over-simplistic to view Britain or America as one single culture, as within each country there are many sub-cultures that may differ in the nature of attachment types. This means that the findings may not be representative of the culture.