Multiple Caregiving among African Americans and Infant Attachments: Issues and an Exploratory Study.

Attachments of African-American infants should be studied with a focus on cultural practices involved with multiple caregiving. Assessments of African-American infant attachments that use standards of a culture in which care is provided by a primary caretaker should be replaced by assessment based on the cultural perspective of African-Americans. This exploratory study tested 37 African-American 1-year-olds in several separation/reunion situations involving the mother and a second caregiver. Results showed consistent reactions of infants to each attachment figure. There was no bias toward mothers as a class. Results for various behavior scales indicated: (1) infant use of attachment figures as a basis for exploration; (2) sociability with stranger independent of attachment figure presence; (3) distress when infant was left alone with stranger; and (4) no difference in seeking proximity, maintaining contact, being inattentive, or resisting after each type of separation/reunion. Hypotheses that infants would respond similarly to both attachment figures and use both attachment figures as a basis for exploration were supported. The hypothesis that infants who were stressed would use caregivers for consolation was not supported. It is inferred that culturally sanctioned patterns of caregiving do not produce pathological relationships. Rather, they produce traits consonant with African-American socialization objectives. (BC)