ABSTRACT
A ccording to attachment theory, infant-mother attachment is a universal evolutionary adaptation that helps ensure the survival of the helpless infant (Bowlby, 1982). All human infants are presumed to have evolved attachment behaviors that serve to elicit the mother’s care and keep her in proximity. The mother thus serves as a secure base from which the infant, feeling protected and secure, may explore. Studies of infant attachment have been conducted worldwide to examine the extent to which patterns of mother-infant attachment behaviors are universal across cultures and to provide evidence for the cross-cultural validity of the Strange Situation as a measure of mother-infant attachment security. Most of these studies have replicated Ainsworth’s (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) pioneering research using the Strange Situation Procedure in finding similar distributions of secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant attachment patterns across cultures (van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). However, attachment researchers using the Strange Situation in two East Asian cultures, Japan and Indonesia, have found an overrepresentation of resistant attachment and little or no avoidant attachment (Takahashi, 1986; Zevalkink, Riksen-Walraven, & Van Lieshout, 1999). Some researchers have argued that these findings cast doubt on the cross-cultural validity of the Strange Situation and even on the basic universal premises of attachment theory. Further studies on East Asian cultures that have similar patterns of infant caregiving as Japan and Indonesia are needed to clarify the extent to which cultural differences in infant caregiving might affect patterns of infant-mother attachment. Thus, the goal of the present study is to extend cross-cultural research on attachment by examining attachment patterns in Korea, another East Asian culture that has infant caregiving customs similar to Japan and Indonesia.
