www.psychspace.com心理学空间网NEW DIRECTIONS
Currently, attachment theory and research are moving forward along several major fronts,
inspired by the second and third volumes of Bowlby’s attachment trilogy, by methodological
advances, and by the infusion into attachment theory of complementary theoretical perspectives.
Attachment and Representation
As a result of Mary Main’s Berkeley study (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985) and, I think, the
publication of the Society for Research in Child Development Monograph, Growing Points of
Attachment Theory and Research (Bretherton & Waters, 1985), we are now beginning to
empirically explore the psychological, internal, or representational aspects of attachment, including
the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns that had been at the center of
Bowlby’s interests since his beginnings in psychiatry but that are most clearly elaborated in
volumes 2 and 3 of the attachment trilogy (see Bretherton, 1987, 1990, 1991).
Interestingly, an additional source of inspiration for the study of internal working models
came from attempts to translate Ainsworth’s infant- mother attachment patterns into corresponding
adult patterns. in the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984; Main &
Goldwyn, in press), parents were asked open-ended questions about their attachment relations in
childhood and about the influence of these early relations on their own development. Three
distinct patterns of responding were identified: Autonomous-secure parents gave a clear and
coherent account of early attachments (whether these had been satisfying or not); preoccupied
parents spoke of many conflicted childhood memories about attachment but did not draw them
together into an organized, consistent picture; and, finally, dismissing parents were characterized
by an inability to remember much about attachment relations in childhood. In some of the
dismissing interviews, parents’ parents were idealized on a general level, hut influences of early
attachment experiences on later development were denied. Specific memories, when they did
occur, suggested episodes of rejection.
Not only did the Adult Attachment Interview classifications correspond to Ainsworth’s
secure, ambivalent, and avoidant infant patterns at a conceptual level, but adult patterns were also
empirically correlated with infant patterns (e.g., a dismissing parent tended to have an avoidant
infant; Main & Goldwyn, in press). These findings have since been validated for prenatally
administered interviews by Fonagy, Steele, and Steele (1991) and by Ward et al. (1990).
Consonant findings were also obtained in a study of young adults in which Adult Attachment
Interview classifications were correlated with peer reports (Kobak & Sceery, 1988).
In addition, representational measures of attachment have been devised for use with
children. A pictorial separation anxiety test for adolescents, developed by Hansburg (1972), was
adapted for younger children by Klagsbrun and Bowlby (1976) and more recently revised and
validated against observed attachment patterns by Kaplan (1984) and Slough and Greenberg
(1991) Likewise, attachment-based doll story completion tasks for preschoolers were validated
against behavioral measures by Bretherton, Ridgeway, and Cassidy (1990) and Cassidy (1988). In
these tests, emotionally open responding tended to be associated with secure attachment
classifications or related behaviors.
Finally, several authors have created interviews that examine attachment from the parental
as opposed to the filial perspective (e.g., Bretherton, Biringen, Ridgeway, Maslin, & Sherman,
1989; George & Solomon, 1989). In addition, Waters and Q-sort that can be used to assess a
mother’s internal working models of her child’s attachment to her.
Attachment Across the Life Span
A related topic, attachment relationships between adults, began in the early 1970s, with
studies of adult bereavement (Bowlby & Parkes, 1970; Parkes, 1972) and marital separation
(Weiss, 1973, 1977). More recently, interest in adult attachments has broadened to encompass
marital relationships (Weiss, 1982, 1991) and has taken a further upsurge with work by Shaver
and Hazan (1988), who translated Ainsworth’s infant attachment patterns into adult patterns,
pointing out that adults who describe themselves as secure, avoidant, or ambivalent with respect
to romantic relationships report differing patterns of parent-child relationships in their families of
origin. Finally, Cicirelli (1989, 1991) has applied attachment theory to the study of middle-aged
siblings and their elderly parents. Much future work will be needed to delineate more fully the
distinct qualities of child-adult, child-child, and adult-adult attachment relationships (see
Ainsworth, 1989), as well as their interplay within the family system, a task begun by Byng-Hall
(1985) and Marvin and Stewart (1990),
Attachment and Developmental Psychopathology
Attachment theory and research are also making a notable impact on the emerging field of
developmental psychopathology (Sroufe, 1988), with longitudinal attachment-based studies of
families with depression (Radke-Yarrow, Cummings, Kuczinsky, & Chapman, 1985), of families
with maltreatment (e.g., Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991; Crittenden, 1983; Schneider-Rosen, Braunwald,
Carlson, & Cicchetti, 1985), and of clinical interventions in families with low social support
(Lieberman & Pawl, 1988; Spieker & Booth, 1988) and with behavior-problem children
(Greenberg & Speltz, 1988). Much of this work is represented in a volume on clinical
implications of attachment (Belsky & Nezworski, 1988). These topics hark back to Bowlby’s
seminal ideas from the 1930s, but they have been greatly enriched by Mary Ainsworth’s notions
on the origins of individual differences of attachment patterns.
The Ecology of Attachment
Although we have made progress in examining mother-child attachment, much work needs
to he done with respect to studying attachment in the microsystem of family relationships
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Despite studies by Belsky, Gilstrap, and Rovine (1984), Lamb (1978),
and Parke and Tinsley (1987) that show fathers to be competent, if sometimes less than fully
participant attachment figures, we still have much to learn regarding father attachment. Another
important topic, sibling attachment, has been tackled by a few researchers (e.g., Stewart &
Marvin, 1984; Teti & Ablard, 1989), but triadic studies of attachment relationships (modeled on
Dunn, 1988) are sorely lacking. Especially crucial are attachment-theoretic studies of loyalty
conflicts, alliances by a dyad vis-a-vis a third family member, and enmeshment of a child in the
spousal dyad, as exemplified in a report by Fish, Belsky, and Youngblade (1991) in which
insecure attachment in infancy was associated with inappropriate involvement in spousal decision-
making at 4 years of age. Finally, the interrelations of child temperament and developing
attachment relationships with other family members remain conceptually unclear despite intensive
research efforts (Belsky & Rovine, 1987; Sroufe, 1985).
The documentation of family and social network factors as they affect attachment relations
(e.g., Belsky & Isabella, 1988; Belsky, Rovine, & Taylor, 1984) has been more successful. In the
Pennsylvania project, attachment quality at the end of the first year was predictable from relative
changes in levels of marital satisfaction after the child’s birth, as well as from parental satisfaction
with social support, hut not its frequency.
An ecological perspective also calls for an examination of issues related to dual-worker
families, especially in view of the continued sex/gender differentiation of parenting. Some feminist
theorists have interpreted attachment theory as supporting the traditional view of women as
primary caregivers (Chodorow, 1978; Johnson, 1988). This is not strictly justified, because
attachment theory does not specify that caregiving must be done by mothers or be restricted to
females (Marris, 1982), Most central to healthy development, according to attachment theory, is
infants’ need for a committed caregiving relationship with one or a few adult figures. Although
the majority of attachment studies have focused on mothers because mothers tend to fill this role
most often, we do have evidence that infants can he attached to a hierarchy of figures, including
fathers, grandparents, and siblings (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964), as well as to day-care providers
(Howes, Rodning, Galuzzo, & Myers, 1988). However, our knowledge about the range of
societal options for successfully sharing the task of bringing up children is still woefully
inadequate. The recent spate of studies documenting an increased risk of insecure attachment if
day care begins in the first year and is extensive in duration (Belsky & Rovine, 1988; Belsky &
Braungart, 1991) is worrisome and needs resolution. Cross-cultural studies of attachment and
nonparental care in countries such as Sweden and Israel may ultimately provide more reliable
answers.
Cross-Cultural Studies
Moving from family and other social networks to the larger societal matrix, we find that
studies of Strange Situation classifications in other cultures have sparked a lively debate on their
universal versus culture-specific meaning. in a north German study, avoidant classifications were
overrepresented (Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess, & Unzner, 1985), whereas ambivalent
classifications were more frequent than expected in Israeli kibbutzim (Sagi et al., 1985) and
in Japan (Miyake, Chen, & Campos, 1985).
Initially, these findings were interpreted in purely cultural terms. Thus, Grossmann et al.
(1985) proposed that the high incidence of avoidant infants in Germany should be attributed not
to parental rejection, hut rather to a greater parental push toward infants’ independence.
Similarly, the high frequency of ambivalent classifications observed in Israeli kibbutzim and Japan
was attributed to underexposure to strangers (Miyake et al., 1985; Sagi et al., 1985). Though
persuasive on the surface, these explanations were not based on systematic assessments of
parental beliefs and culturally guided practices.
More recently, van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) examined the frequency distributions
of Strange Situation classifications from over a thousand U.S. and cross-national studies,
pointing out that valid conclusions about cross-national differences should not be drawn from
single samples. In addition, intercorrelational patterns of home and Strange Situation behavior in
north Germany (Grossmann et al., 1985) closely resembled those in the Ainsworth’s Baltimore
study, at least in part undermining a purely cultural interpretation. Likewise, Sagi, Aviezer,
Mayseless, Donnell, and Joels (1991) attribute the abundance of ambivalent classifications to
specific nighttime caregiving arrangements in the kibbutzim they studied, rather than fewer
experiences with strangers. Taken in combination, these findings suggest that Strange Situation
classifications, and hence the concept of parental sensitivity, may have more cross-cultural
validity in industrialized nations than was initially believed, hut the issue is by no means resolved.
Systematic work on the more fascinating topic of how different cultures-especially non-
Western cultures-fit attachment behaviors and relationships into their overall social organization
has barely begun. There are, however, some tantalizing hints in the ethnographic literature (see
Bretherton, 1985, for a review). For example, the Micronesian society of Tikopia (Firth, 1936)
deliberately fosters attachment between an infant and its maternal uncle by prescribing face-toface
talk with the infant on a regular basis. This maternal uncle is destined to play an important
quasi-parental role in the life of the child. Along somewhat different lines, Balinese mothers
control their infants’ exploratory behavior by using fake fear expressions to bring the infants back
into close proximity to them (Bateson & Mead, 1942). In both cultures, a biological system is
molded to a particular society’s purposes (by fostering specific relationships or controlling
exploration).
A recent study of parent-infant attachment among the Efe begins to provide systematic
information in this area. The Efe, a semi-nomadic people, live in the African rain forest, subsisting
on foraging, horticulture, and hunting (Tronick, Winn, & Morelli, 1985). Young Efe infants
receive more care (including nursing) from other adult women than from their own mother,
except at night. Despite this multiple mothering system, by 6 months, infants begin to insist on a
more focalized relationship with their own mothers, although other female caregivers continue to
play a significant role. Tronick et al. attributed Efe practices to their living arrangements, with
closely spaced dwellings that offer little privacy and that make cooperation and sharing highly
valued behaviors. In sum, attachment behavior is heavily overlain with cultural prescriptions, even
in a society that much more closely resembles the conditions of human evolution than our own.
To better explore such cultural variations in attachment organization attachment researchers need
to develop ecologically valid, theory-driven measures, tailored to specific cultures and based on a
deeper knowledge of parents’ and children’s culture-specific folk theories about family relationships
and attachment.
Attachment and Public Policy
Cultural differences in the regulation of attachment behaviors raise important questions
about the value diverse societies place on attachment relations. In a thought-provoking chapter,
Marris (1991) points to the fundamental tension between the desire to create a secure and
predictable social order and the desire to maximize one’s own opportunities at the expense of
others. A good society, according to Marris, would he one which, as far as is humanly possible,
minimizes disruptive events, protects each child’s experience of attachment from harm, and
supports family coping. Yet, in order to control uncertainty, individuals and families are tempted
to achieve certainty at the expense of others (i.e., by imposing a greater burden of uncertainty on
them or by providing fewer material and social resources). When powerful groups in society
promote their own control over life circumstances by subordinating and marginalizing others,
they make it less possible for these groups to offer and experience security in their own families.
Valuing of attachment relations thus has public policy and moral implications for society, not just
psychological implications for attachment dyads. This brings me hack to one of Bowlby’s early
statements:
“If a community values its children it must cherish their parents” (Bowlby, 1951, p. 84).
Currently, attachment theory and research are moving forward along several major fronts,
inspired by the second and third volumes of Bowlby’s attachment trilogy, by methodological
advances, and by the infusion into attachment theory of complementary theoretical perspectives.
Attachment and Representation
As a result of Mary Main’s Berkeley study (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985) and, I think, the
publication of the Society for Research in Child Development Monograph, Growing Points of
Attachment Theory and Research (Bretherton & Waters, 1985), we are now beginning to
empirically explore the psychological, internal, or representational aspects of attachment, including
the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns that had been at the center of
Bowlby’s interests since his beginnings in psychiatry but that are most clearly elaborated in
volumes 2 and 3 of the attachment trilogy (see Bretherton, 1987, 1990, 1991).
Interestingly, an additional source of inspiration for the study of internal working models
came from attempts to translate Ainsworth’s infant- mother attachment patterns into corresponding
adult patterns. in the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984; Main &
Goldwyn, in press), parents were asked open-ended questions about their attachment relations in
childhood and about the influence of these early relations on their own development. Three
distinct patterns of responding were identified: Autonomous-secure parents gave a clear and
coherent account of early attachments (whether these had been satisfying or not); preoccupied
parents spoke of many conflicted childhood memories about attachment but did not draw them
together into an organized, consistent picture; and, finally, dismissing parents were characterized
by an inability to remember much about attachment relations in childhood. In some of the
dismissing interviews, parents’ parents were idealized on a general level, hut influences of early
attachment experiences on later development were denied. Specific memories, when they did
occur, suggested episodes of rejection.
Not only did the Adult Attachment Interview classifications correspond to Ainsworth’s
secure, ambivalent, and avoidant infant patterns at a conceptual level, but adult patterns were also
empirically correlated with infant patterns (e.g., a dismissing parent tended to have an avoidant
infant; Main & Goldwyn, in press). These findings have since been validated for prenatally
administered interviews by Fonagy, Steele, and Steele (1991) and by Ward et al. (1990).
Consonant findings were also obtained in a study of young adults in which Adult Attachment
Interview classifications were correlated with peer reports (Kobak & Sceery, 1988).
In addition, representational measures of attachment have been devised for use with
children. A pictorial separation anxiety test for adolescents, developed by Hansburg (1972), was
adapted for younger children by Klagsbrun and Bowlby (1976) and more recently revised and
validated against observed attachment patterns by Kaplan (1984) and Slough and Greenberg
(1991) Likewise, attachment-based doll story completion tasks for preschoolers were validated
against behavioral measures by Bretherton, Ridgeway, and Cassidy (1990) and Cassidy (1988). In
these tests, emotionally open responding tended to be associated with secure attachment
classifications or related behaviors.
Finally, several authors have created interviews that examine attachment from the parental
as opposed to the filial perspective (e.g., Bretherton, Biringen, Ridgeway, Maslin, & Sherman,
1989; George & Solomon, 1989). In addition, Waters and Q-sort that can be used to assess a
mother’s internal working models of her child’s attachment to her.
Attachment Across the Life Span
A related topic, attachment relationships between adults, began in the early 1970s, with
studies of adult bereavement (Bowlby & Parkes, 1970; Parkes, 1972) and marital separation
(Weiss, 1973, 1977). More recently, interest in adult attachments has broadened to encompass
marital relationships (Weiss, 1982, 1991) and has taken a further upsurge with work by Shaver
and Hazan (1988), who translated Ainsworth’s infant attachment patterns into adult patterns,
pointing out that adults who describe themselves as secure, avoidant, or ambivalent with respect
to romantic relationships report differing patterns of parent-child relationships in their families of
origin. Finally, Cicirelli (1989, 1991) has applied attachment theory to the study of middle-aged
siblings and their elderly parents. Much future work will be needed to delineate more fully the
distinct qualities of child-adult, child-child, and adult-adult attachment relationships (see
Ainsworth, 1989), as well as their interplay within the family system, a task begun by Byng-Hall
(1985) and Marvin and Stewart (1990),
Attachment and Developmental Psychopathology
Attachment theory and research are also making a notable impact on the emerging field of
developmental psychopathology (Sroufe, 1988), with longitudinal attachment-based studies of
families with depression (Radke-Yarrow, Cummings, Kuczinsky, & Chapman, 1985), of families
with maltreatment (e.g., Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991; Crittenden, 1983; Schneider-Rosen, Braunwald,
Carlson, & Cicchetti, 1985), and of clinical interventions in families with low social support
(Lieberman & Pawl, 1988; Spieker & Booth, 1988) and with behavior-problem children
(Greenberg & Speltz, 1988). Much of this work is represented in a volume on clinical
implications of attachment (Belsky & Nezworski, 1988). These topics hark back to Bowlby’s
seminal ideas from the 1930s, but they have been greatly enriched by Mary Ainsworth’s notions
on the origins of individual differences of attachment patterns.
The Ecology of Attachment
Although we have made progress in examining mother-child attachment, much work needs
to he done with respect to studying attachment in the microsystem of family relationships
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Despite studies by Belsky, Gilstrap, and Rovine (1984), Lamb (1978),
and Parke and Tinsley (1987) that show fathers to be competent, if sometimes less than fully
participant attachment figures, we still have much to learn regarding father attachment. Another
important topic, sibling attachment, has been tackled by a few researchers (e.g., Stewart &
Marvin, 1984; Teti & Ablard, 1989), but triadic studies of attachment relationships (modeled on
Dunn, 1988) are sorely lacking. Especially crucial are attachment-theoretic studies of loyalty
conflicts, alliances by a dyad vis-a-vis a third family member, and enmeshment of a child in the
spousal dyad, as exemplified in a report by Fish, Belsky, and Youngblade (1991) in which
insecure attachment in infancy was associated with inappropriate involvement in spousal decision-
making at 4 years of age. Finally, the interrelations of child temperament and developing
attachment relationships with other family members remain conceptually unclear despite intensive
research efforts (Belsky & Rovine, 1987; Sroufe, 1985).
The documentation of family and social network factors as they affect attachment relations
(e.g., Belsky & Isabella, 1988; Belsky, Rovine, & Taylor, 1984) has been more successful. In the
Pennsylvania project, attachment quality at the end of the first year was predictable from relative
changes in levels of marital satisfaction after the child’s birth, as well as from parental satisfaction
with social support, hut not its frequency.
An ecological perspective also calls for an examination of issues related to dual-worker
families, especially in view of the continued sex/gender differentiation of parenting. Some feminist
theorists have interpreted attachment theory as supporting the traditional view of women as
primary caregivers (Chodorow, 1978; Johnson, 1988). This is not strictly justified, because
attachment theory does not specify that caregiving must be done by mothers or be restricted to
females (Marris, 1982), Most central to healthy development, according to attachment theory, is
infants’ need for a committed caregiving relationship with one or a few adult figures. Although
the majority of attachment studies have focused on mothers because mothers tend to fill this role
most often, we do have evidence that infants can he attached to a hierarchy of figures, including
fathers, grandparents, and siblings (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964), as well as to day-care providers
(Howes, Rodning, Galuzzo, & Myers, 1988). However, our knowledge about the range of
societal options for successfully sharing the task of bringing up children is still woefully
inadequate. The recent spate of studies documenting an increased risk of insecure attachment if
day care begins in the first year and is extensive in duration (Belsky & Rovine, 1988; Belsky &
Braungart, 1991) is worrisome and needs resolution. Cross-cultural studies of attachment and
nonparental care in countries such as Sweden and Israel may ultimately provide more reliable
answers.
Cross-Cultural Studies
Moving from family and other social networks to the larger societal matrix, we find that
studies of Strange Situation classifications in other cultures have sparked a lively debate on their
universal versus culture-specific meaning. in a north German study, avoidant classifications were
overrepresented (Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess, & Unzner, 1985), whereas ambivalent
classifications were more frequent than expected in Israeli kibbutzim (Sagi et al., 1985) and
in Japan (Miyake, Chen, & Campos, 1985).
Initially, these findings were interpreted in purely cultural terms. Thus, Grossmann et al.
(1985) proposed that the high incidence of avoidant infants in Germany should be attributed not
to parental rejection, hut rather to a greater parental push toward infants’ independence.
Similarly, the high frequency of ambivalent classifications observed in Israeli kibbutzim and Japan
was attributed to underexposure to strangers (Miyake et al., 1985; Sagi et al., 1985). Though
persuasive on the surface, these explanations were not based on systematic assessments of
parental beliefs and culturally guided practices.
More recently, van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) examined the frequency distributions
of Strange Situation classifications from over a thousand U.S. and cross-national studies,
pointing out that valid conclusions about cross-national differences should not be drawn from
single samples. In addition, intercorrelational patterns of home and Strange Situation behavior in
north Germany (Grossmann et al., 1985) closely resembled those in the Ainsworth’s Baltimore
study, at least in part undermining a purely cultural interpretation. Likewise, Sagi, Aviezer,
Mayseless, Donnell, and Joels (1991) attribute the abundance of ambivalent classifications to
specific nighttime caregiving arrangements in the kibbutzim they studied, rather than fewer
experiences with strangers. Taken in combination, these findings suggest that Strange Situation
classifications, and hence the concept of parental sensitivity, may have more cross-cultural
validity in industrialized nations than was initially believed, hut the issue is by no means resolved.
Systematic work on the more fascinating topic of how different cultures-especially non-
Western cultures-fit attachment behaviors and relationships into their overall social organization
has barely begun. There are, however, some tantalizing hints in the ethnographic literature (see
Bretherton, 1985, for a review). For example, the Micronesian society of Tikopia (Firth, 1936)
deliberately fosters attachment between an infant and its maternal uncle by prescribing face-toface
talk with the infant on a regular basis. This maternal uncle is destined to play an important
quasi-parental role in the life of the child. Along somewhat different lines, Balinese mothers
control their infants’ exploratory behavior by using fake fear expressions to bring the infants back
into close proximity to them (Bateson & Mead, 1942). In both cultures, a biological system is
molded to a particular society’s purposes (by fostering specific relationships or controlling
exploration).
A recent study of parent-infant attachment among the Efe begins to provide systematic
information in this area. The Efe, a semi-nomadic people, live in the African rain forest, subsisting
on foraging, horticulture, and hunting (Tronick, Winn, & Morelli, 1985). Young Efe infants
receive more care (including nursing) from other adult women than from their own mother,
except at night. Despite this multiple mothering system, by 6 months, infants begin to insist on a
more focalized relationship with their own mothers, although other female caregivers continue to
play a significant role. Tronick et al. attributed Efe practices to their living arrangements, with
closely spaced dwellings that offer little privacy and that make cooperation and sharing highly
valued behaviors. In sum, attachment behavior is heavily overlain with cultural prescriptions, even
in a society that much more closely resembles the conditions of human evolution than our own.
To better explore such cultural variations in attachment organization attachment researchers need
to develop ecologically valid, theory-driven measures, tailored to specific cultures and based on a
deeper knowledge of parents’ and children’s culture-specific folk theories about family relationships
and attachment.
Attachment and Public Policy
Cultural differences in the regulation of attachment behaviors raise important questions
about the value diverse societies place on attachment relations. In a thought-provoking chapter,
Marris (1991) points to the fundamental tension between the desire to create a secure and
predictable social order and the desire to maximize one’s own opportunities at the expense of
others. A good society, according to Marris, would he one which, as far as is humanly possible,
minimizes disruptive events, protects each child’s experience of attachment from harm, and
supports family coping. Yet, in order to control uncertainty, individuals and families are tempted
to achieve certainty at the expense of others (i.e., by imposing a greater burden of uncertainty on
them or by providing fewer material and social resources). When powerful groups in society
promote their own control over life circumstances by subordinating and marginalizing others,
they make it less possible for these groups to offer and experience security in their own families.
Valuing of attachment relations thus has public policy and moral implications for society, not just
psychological implications for attachment dyads. This brings me hack to one of Bowlby’s early
statements:
“If a community values its children it must cherish their parents” (Bowlby, 1951, p. 84).
www.psychspace.com心理学空间网
