Through Colombian Lenses: Ethnographic and Conventional Analyses of Maternal Care and Their Associations With Secure Base Behavior.

Abstract

According to attachment theory, the quality of care plays a key role in the organization of infants' secure base behavior across contexts and cultures. Yet information about attachment relationships in a variety of cultures is scarce, and questions remain as to whether Ainsworth's conceptualization of early care quality (sensitivity; M. D. S. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978) is appropriate for characterizing caregiving behavior in different groups and whether culturally specific descriptions of early care are related to conventional measures of maternal sensitivity and to infants' security. In this naturalistic study of mother-infant interactions in Colombia, scores on different domains of maternal care were obtained through ethnographic methodology, and conventional Q-sort scores for maternal and infant behavior were obtained. Findings are discussed in terms of the cross-cultural generality of the sensitivity construct and the sensitivity-security link and of the relevance of naturalistic open-ended studies in different contexts.

The quality of maternal secure-base scripts predicts children's secure-base behavior at home in three sociocultural groups

“…Children in the US sample had the lowest average scores (r = .35) and children in the Colombian sample had the highest average scores (r = .49). The security score for the Colombian sample is somewhat higher than reported previously in Colombian samples (i.e., .43 and .46 in Posada et al, 2002;Posada, Carbonell, Alzate, & Plata, 2004) and the difference between Colombian and US means was not itself significant (z = 1.2, p > .25), suggesting that the samples could be combined for our primary analyses. E. Waters (1995) also provides a Dependency Criterion sort for the AQS and we calculated this score as well.…”

An Examination of Attachment Styles and Social Skills of University Students

“…The person who meets its needs is generally the mother who gave birth to the child and brings it up (Ainsworth, 1967). The sensitivity of mother towards her baby (meeting her needs on time), her approachability, acceptance of her baby, her communication with the baby and reactivity (Posada, Carbonell, Alzate & Plata, 2004), lead to the formation of an emotional connection between mother and baby (Ainsworth, 1967). Bowlby called this emotional connection between the mother and the child as attachment.…”

Cuidado materno y seguridad del apego antes del primer año de vida

“…Por un lado, los meta-análisis que han estudiado esta relación en diversos contextos han reportado asociaciones de débiles a moderadas entre ambas variables (Atkinson et al, 2000;De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997;Goldsmith & Alansky, 1987;Nievar & Becker, 2008). En cambio, las investigaciones realizadas en América Latina han encontrado correlaciones más robustas que van desde 0.46 a 0.61 (Posada et al, 1999;Posada et al, 2002;Posada, Carbonell, Alzate, & Plata, 2004;Valenzuela, 1997); específicamente en el Perú los estudios realizados han mostrado asociaciones de 0.31 y 0.63 entre ambas variables (Dávila, 2013;Nóblega, 2012).…”