The temporal stability of attachment classifications

As the Strange Situation has come into prominence as a procedure for assessing individual differences in parent–infant attachments, there have been several attempts to use it in countries other than the U.S. Undoubtedly fostered by the widespread claims from American studies regarding the reliable external correlates (antecedents and consequences) of Strange Situation behavior, these attempts were based in part on formulations from evolutionary biology suggesting the transcultural applicability of the classification scheme. Thus they have proven very important to our developing understanding and interpretation of Strange Situation behavior. This is because the findings obtained have forced researchers to ask themselves why the distribution of infants across attachment classifications in other countries is not in accord with that of American infants. In attempting to answer this question, they have suggested that national group differences in infant temperament and in child-rearing patterns which may be unrelated to parental sensitivity (such as those variations in prior experience that affect the stressfulness of the procedure) may affect Strange Situation behavior. Not surprisingly, this has inevitably led them to wonder about the extent to which the same factors affect the behavior of American babies as well. To the extent that these factors influence Strange Situation behavior, of course, the assumption that individual differences in Strange Situation behavior in the U.S. necessarily and primarily reflect individual differences in prior parental behavior becomes increasingly less persuasive. Likewise, researchers have been forced to question the assumptions that (1) similar patterns of Strange Situation behavior necessarily have the same origins and the same relationship to future behavior in different cultures, and thus that (2) “Strange Situation behavior” is isomorphic with “security of attachment.” Such issues clearly get to the heart of current theorizing involving the Strange Situation and offer the greatest promise of advancing our understanding of the origins and implications of early individual differences in infant–parent attachments.