Attachment Theory for multiculturalism?
BOOK REVIEW : The Myth of Attachment Theory: a critical understanding for multicultural societies by Heidi Keller, pub: 2022, Routledge, Oxon
Discovering attachment theory as a student social worker in the year 2000 was like a flashing blinding light coming into my life. Suddenly so many of my experiences and those of my family and friends around me made sense. I was completely and utterly hooked. A devotee.
That was before I worked with people who grew up in different cultures, and, especially, before I travelled (as opposed to holidayed). Whilst I still wholeheartedly believed in attachment theory I was finding I was having to ‘apply’ attachment theory as I knew it to the ways in which other cultures functioned in their childrearing and parenting styles. I came to understand that the Eurocentric models of parenting were not the only successful ways for communities to support the raising of their next generations. And it was OK.
Until one particular fostering & adoption assessment broke my heart, and is probably what really drove me to accept that front line assessment work was no longer where I belonged. It showed me the impossibility, for me as an individual social worker, to break out of the barriers of what is in effect unintended institutionalised ignorance and racism embedded in some of our key theories that underpin so much of modern social work. So I was immediately interested when I came across Heidi Keller’s book.
The particular assessment I refer to involved an African woman who had moved to the UK as a young adult. Let’s call her Zena (obviously not her real name). She had been ambitious and determined to fit in with her new culture and in almost every way the way she lived her life was a model example of what anyone would expect of a future adoptive or foster parent. Although myself a white social worker, I had worked with many carers and families from both African and Caribbean backgrounds, and I had learned so much from them, starting with the language of cultural identity. Hardly surprising Zena identified as either from her native country or African (as well, I should add, as British), and throughout the assessment I used one of her own identified terms to describe her nationality and culture. The second thing about the assessment was I began with an attempt at a deeper understanding of her own childhood experiences and upbringing, so different to a child born in the UK, in order to provide a layer of context that doesn’t always seem so necessary for someone who was born and brought up in the culture in which they are being assessed and about which we make implicit assumptions.
In the second decade of the 21st century, not only did management remove much of the culturally relevant information that rounded out this applicant’s personality and life experiences, but, more devastatingly, changed all references to her identity from African to Afro-Caribbean, a culturally offensive term best described as white laziness for ‘blacks we can’t so easily tell apart’. I saw how that wounded her, as the full weight of institutionalised racism came down upon her head.
I have seen over the years how assessments on cultural and social assumptions rooted in the middle class experiences of the theories we depend on, and less on the lived experiences and their impact on the individual(s) involved, even within the same supposed culture. The richness of assessments, and the consequential understanding of the dynamics of families, that were written half a century ago, have been lost, ironically as “anti-discriminatory” practice became better understood, and, particularly with the development of greater openness in sharing what we think and write with those we think and write about. A negative consequence of what should only have been a positive change.
But, as always, I have strayed from my purpose!
In the forward to the English edition of Keller’s book Nandita Chaudhary introduces the reader to WEIRD people – Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic, and elsewhere the book reminds us that academia is the preserve of the educated middle classes, based on their experiences and perceived needs. Chaudhary also comments on the rise and normalisation of the nuclear family, adding “The shift from bigger to smaller and detached families led to a system that liberates the rich and marginalises the poor. Larger families had greater resilience, with a large group of people to fall back on in times of need.”
Keller begins with an overview of the origins of attachment theory and the vulnerabilities even in the very beginning of its development: Bowlby was warned, but did not heed, by Margaret Mead ‘not to over generalise from a monocultural perspective’. Concerns are raised on the over-dependence of Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedure as lacking comparisons to outcomes that might have been observed in a child’s natural environment. Where later research came up with different conclusions (such as the incidence of secure versus avoidant or ambivalent models of attachment), it seems that the research was deemed at fault rather than using it as an opportunity to challenge the theory itself, the very underpinning of the ethos of good research in the first place.
Regardless of these early flaws, the question now is, is the attachment theory of the academic middle classes of over half a century ago, still fit for purpose in a modern multicultural society. Or as Keller writes in her personal preface to the book, “The challenges of multicultural societies just cannot be met with one single doctrine.”
Criticism of attachment theory has not been welcomed and Keller observes that despite some apparent ‘mini attachment theories’, the ‘attachment theory of the 21st Century is largely identical to the attachment theory of the 1950s/60s’.
The world has changed in over 60 years. Our own WEIRD society has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, as my previous blogs discussing mental health and community have covered. Why then can’t the theory that underpins everything we believe in as a social work profession provide the evidence that it has kept up with changing society?
Keller’s quote of Ross Thompson that “While culturally oriented researchers ask for greater culturally informed attachment research, attachment researchers wonder where they can find greater attachment informed cultural studies” particularly struck me as reflecting my own dilemmas in undertaking assessments with Caribbean and African adults whose childhood experiences were so far outside the norms of attachment theory, and yet had still ended up as emotionally secure and stable adults, partners and parents, I was left with the sense of trying to fit the culture to the theory, or, in other words, writing attachment informed cultural assessments whereas what I really needed was a culturally informed attachment theory.
Keller provides a well-evidenced presentation that not only was Bowlby’s original attachment theory based on narrow set of assumptions of what constituted family and parenting, even for the 1950’s, but that criticisms since have not been taken on board and Bowlby’s attachment theory remains relevant to a culture that even the society to which it originally applied has largely moved away from. Leaving social worker assessors to continue to try to fit the evidence to the theory rather than having a theory that encompasses the evidence.
As a taster of some of the observations from the book – Cameroonian Nso mothers watching clips of German middle class mothers caring for their babies being surprised at what they considered to be the insensitivity of the German mothers; when the baby cries the Cameroonian Nso mothers first instinct is to feed the infant, while they saw the German mothers talking to the babies and checking if the baby had other needs to be met before finally offering feeding. And the one that surprised me: the phenomenon of the “terrible twos” occurs predominantly in Western middle class societies. First time parents in their 20’s or 30’s in Western cultures are more likely to have their first experience of caring for an infant when they have their own baby to care for, while in many other countries, particularly poorer rural countries, the new mother will have experience of parenting younger children since she herself was a very young child. Some cultural expectations of play being with others means that children will have no experience of manipulating and playing with any object while alone; this will affect the effectiveness and interpretation of a child from that culture in the Strange Situation test.
Further Reading
Heidi Keller is also the author of this 2018 paper, using different cultural examples than the book. It points out that as our Western countries become more culturally diverse this has potentially significant consequences for other cultures migrating to Western countries, and the Westernisation we also see going on. The conclusion is that the lack of cultural contextualisation means there is no validity in the claims for universality in attachment theory, and as it is the underpinning basis for the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention is also culturally flawed.
Overall, despite being from the same author, this paper is an easier read than the book, above.
Social Work & Politics 