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Categorization Difficulties Across Cultures

Much of the research concerning infants classified as having, Secure, Anxious-Ambivalent, and Anxious-Avoidant Attachments, to their primary caregivers can be credited to Mary Ainsworth. Ainsworth’s work concludes that children are mostly classified as having secure attachments to their caregivers, whereas only a small number are defined as having anxious-ambivalent or anxious-avoidant attachments to their caregivers. The problem with Ainsworth’s research is that it was only conducted in the United States. Basically, she determined that there must be a universal link to Eastern cultures as well, in that most infants have secure attachments to their central caregiver, whereas a small minority have anxious-ambivalent or anxious-avoidant attachments. In regard to the possibility that there might be a universal link to attachment patterns (meaning that the secure attachment was pretty much the norm) for other Eastern cultures, Klaus Grossmann and his wife Karin Grossmann, explored the possibility of seeing a link. Using Mary Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation Protocol”, Grossmann and Grossmann tested the theory on children and mothers in Bielefeld, Northern, Germany in 1975. Their results showcased something very interesting, while the majority of children and mother interactions they observed were seen as secure (57%), a staggering 35% were observed to have shown insecure-avoidant attachments with their mother and strangers, while 8% were defined as insecure-resistant. Reasons for this kind of attachment between infants and their mothers in Germany could perhaps be due to Germans expecting their children to be more self-sufficient and not need coddling. As Grossmann and Grossmann assert about what German parents seek, “Independent, non-clingy infants, who do not make demands on parents, but obey their commands”. Therefore, based on the results, Grossmann and Grossmann believe that America is a little more protective of their children compared to German parents. In another study conducted by Takahashi in 1986, Japanese mother-infant attachments were looked into. Sixty mother-infant pairs were studied and the results showed that 68% of them were secure attachments, but 32% were classified as anxious-ambivalent. The interesting facet to this study though was that the anxious-ambivalent infants were filled with resistant children only and there were not any avoidant children. In a study conducted on Israeli interactions between children and mothers there was yet again another high influx of anxious-resistant attachments between mother and infants. The statistics for this study were, 54% secure, 7% anxious-ambivalent, and 29% anxious-avoidant. The reasoning as to these results and why there was such a high amount of resistant infants who did not know how to react around strangers is believed to be attributed by the cultures of Japanese and Israeli peoples. It was said that the Israeli and Japanese cultures heavily focus on mother-child relationships and they often do not have much early interactions with strangers.