Gender and attachment representations in the preschool years: comparisons between five countries

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_6C09BD909E8E
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Gender and attachment representations in the preschool years: comparisons between five countries
Journal
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
Author(s)
Pierrehumbert Blaise, Pia Santelices Maria, Ibáñez Margarita, Alberdi Maika, Ongari Barbara, Roskam Isabelle, Stievenart Marie, Spencer Rosario, Fresno Rodríguez Andrés, Borghini Ayala
ISSN
0022-0221
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2009
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
40
Number
4
Pages
543-566
Language
english
Abstract
Bowlby proposed that the individual's social experiences, as early as in infancy, contribute to the construction of Internal Working Models (IWMs) of attachment, which will later guide the individual's expectations and behaviors in close relationships all along his or her life. The qualitative, individual characteristics of these models reflect the specificity of the individual's early experiences with attachment figures. The attachment literature globally shows that the qualities of IWMs are neither gender specific nor cultural specific. Procedures to evaluate IWMs in adulthood have been well established, based on narrative accounts of childhood experiences. Narrative procedures at earlier ages (e.g., in the preschool years) have been proposed, such as Bretherton's Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), to evaluate attachment representations. More than 500 ASCT narratives of preschoolers, coming from five different countries, have been collected, in the perspective of examining possible interactions between gender and culture regarding attachment representations. A specific Q-Sort coding procedure (CCH) has been used to evaluate several dimensions of the narratives. Girls' narratives appeared as systematically more secure than those of same-age boys, whatever their culture. The magnitude of gender differences, however, varied between countries. Taylor's model of gender-specific responses to stress and Harwood's and Posada's hypothesis on inter-cultural differences regarding caregiving are evoked to understand the differences across gender and countries.
Keywords
attachment , gender , culture , children
Web of science
Create date
16/02/2010 15:26
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:26
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