Abstract :
[en] Bowlby proposed that the individual’s social experiences, as early as in infancy, contribute to
the construction of Internal Working Models (IWMs) of attachment, which will later guide the
individual’s expectations and behaviors in close relationships all along his or her life. The
qualitative, individual characteristics of these models reflect the specificity of the individual’s
early experiences with attachment figures. The attachment literature globally shows that the
qualities of IWMs are neither gender specific nor cultural specific. Procedures to evaluate
IWMs in adulthood have been well established, based on narrative accounts of childhood
experiences. Narrative procedures at earlier ages (e.g., in the preschool years) have been proposed, such as Bretherton’s Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), to evaluate attachment representations. More than 500 ASCT narratives of preschoolers, coming from five
different countries, have been collected, in the perspective of examining possible interactions
between gender and culture regarding attachment representations. A specific Q-Sort coding
procedure (CCH) has been used to evaluate several dimensions of the narratives. Girls’ narratives appeared as systematically more secure than those of same-age boys, whatever their culture. The magnitude of gender differences, however, varied between countries. Taylor’s
model of gender-specific responses to stress and Harwood’s and Posada’s hypothesis on intercultural differences regarding caregiving are evoked to understand the differences across
gender and countries.
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