Cooperative Breeding and Attachment among the Aka Foragers

Abstract

While attachment research has generally been situated and understood within the confines of the mother-child dyad, there is an increasing call to examine the “constellation of relational influences” on children’s attachment security (Thompson 2000:147). In addition, some attachment theorists have begun to argue that a focus on the mother-child dyad significantly decreases predictive power when examining the effects of attachment on child development (van IJzendoorn et al. 1992). These calls to incorporate other caregivers in our understanding of children’s attachments stem from a growing understanding of the extent and nature of children’s broader social relationships—specifically, that the mother-child dyad does not exist in isolation. Mothers and children are situated within large social networks and these networks affect the formation and security of children’s attachments with mothers and others (Ahnert et al. 2000; Jacobson and Frye 1991; Spieker and Bensley 1994; Tronick et al. 1992). Unfortunately, research on children’s attachments to non-maternal caregivers (Howes and Spieker 2008), and attachment in cross-cultural perspective (van IJzendoorn and Sagi 2008) is limited. There continues to be an emphasis on the mother-child dyad and research is predominately conducted in Western cultures, where mothers and children are more isolated from assistance than what is typically found throughout most of the world.