Outline and evaluate research findings into cross cultural studies of attachment If attachment is an innate behaviour we would expect attachment behaviours to be very similar across the world. Infant attachment styles in various cultures have been studied using the strange situation test. There are differences and similarities in attachment types between cultures. German infants showed a different pattern of attachment than the other groups. Only 40% of them were securely attached, 49% of them were anxious and avoidant, and the remaining 11% were anxious and resistant.
Using a combination of behavioural measures, mainly proximity seeking and maintenance of proximity, Ainsworth classified infants as securely attached, anxious avoidant or anxious resistant. In the middle class US samples, 65% of infants were categorized as secure with the remainder equally distributed across the other two types. Ainsworth research led her to two conclusions, firstly there are different types of attachments and these types are differentiated in observed attachment behaviours. Secondly, the type of attachment between a mother and child is dependent upon the mother sensitivity and responsiveness to the child. Ainsworth said that an anxious avoidant child ignores their mother, seems indifferent, is easily comforted, they treat mother and stranger the same.
Case workers, child welfare services, and the psychological community alike have taken an interest as to the impact sibling separation has on an individual child. Sibling relationships are the most enduring of interpersonal ties and serve as important contexts for individual development (East & Khoo, 2005). The researchers wanted only to observe the effect that sibling relationships have on adjustment during tenure in foster care and other factors. A broad sample pool was used and factors such as age spacing, initial placement, duration of maltreatment, kinship vs. certified foster home, caregiver language, and disability were used as elimination (control) factors. This particular study used 78 sibling pairs (after elimination).
Describe and evaluate research into cross cultural variations in attachment In 1988, Van Ljzendoorn and Kroonenberg used an analysis of the Strange Situation to research cross-cultural patterns of attachment. They used the same procedure as Ainsworth of assessing attachment as it shows how not all infants are securely attached. They therefore found the same three types of attachment: Secure attachment, insecure resistant and insecure avoidant. One of the most significant findings was that there was a 1.5 x more varaiations with cultures then between cultures. Also they found that secure attachment was the normal attachment throughout each country.
In contrast, in more modern times, unwed mothers are more abundantly seen and accepted. In spite of what hardships it may bring, babies born to unwed mothers are now more often taken home to be raised by the mother and or extended family. Nevertheless, the most common reason for a mother to place her child up for adoption remains to be due to her being single. Secondly, in the 1950s society mainly concentrated on the negative views of being an unwed mother. The age of a person at the time of marriage was significantly lower than the age of today.
Descirbe and Evaluate Cross Cultural Variations in attachment (12 marks) Due to the fact that the ways that people bring up their children can be very different all over the world as we share different attitudes, values and beliefs etc. People emphasize on developing distinct skills and qualities, so attachments formed can be different. For instance, countries like America and Germany would value personal independence and achieve more, whereas interdependence people is valued more in China. The two cultures mentioned are called individualistic culture and collectivist culture respectively. Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg carried out a meta-analysis that collates and analyses data from many studies carried out by other researchers of 32 separate studies in eight different countries over 2000 babies using Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’.
Outline and evaluate cultural influences on gender roles Culture is the rules, aims, customs, morals and child rearing practices that bind together a group of people. There are three main aims of cross cultural research. The first is to explore the relative contribution of nature and nurture to the development of gender. The variability across cultures suggests gender roles is learned through the process of socialisation. It also aims to reduce ethnocentrism meaning the tendency to use our own cultural group as the norm and judge others as deviating from this.
Bowlby was very much influenced by Lorenz’s (1935) study of imprinting which showed that attachment was innate and therefore has a survival value - during the evolution of humans it would have been the babies who stayed close to their mothers who would have survived to have children of their own. In turn, Bowlbys evolutionary theory of attachment suggests that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with their main caregiver – usually the mother – in order to survive, this is known as monotropy. According to this babies instinctively seek proximity to their mother figures; hence they display social releaser behaviours, e.g. crying when in contact with a stranger, in order to stimulate care from mother. Forming this attachment provides a safe base, giving babies the confidence to explore, therefore Bowlby suggested that this initial attachment relationship acts as a prototype for all future social relationships so disrupting it during the critical period (first 2 1/2 years) can have severe consequences on the childs development.
In addition, Carol Gilligan (1988) theorized that gender differences affected human development. Adolescents of different generations live with different cultural, social, economic, academic, political, and public health stressors found within different historical eras. If Erikson’s Theory (1950) of the universal epigenetic sequence of development displays a true window to human development, the experience of being an adolescent is the same throughout cultural and sub-cultural populations, in different historical eras, and for males, and females. Examined within are the similarities and differences in the area of cultures and sub-cultures. The Universality of Adolescence as a Distinct Life-Period in Every Culture As stated, Erickson’s Theory (1950) supported the universality of adolescence as distinct life period (Schwartz & Montgomery 2002; Chen & Farruggia, 2002).
Melhuish (93) suggested that where variations in stable attachment occur, they are usually associated with the form of parenting such as divorce. Main and Cassidy (88) did research into stable attachment types by using a reunion test by which they analyse the reunion of child and parent after an hour of separation. Main and Cassidy observed this on 6 years whose attachment styles had been categorised when they were 1.They found that most of the children( 78% ) had the same attachment that they had when they were younger however in some cases the style changed but mostly because of major changes in