Belief: Attachment is a white middle class construct

Attachment Revisited: Universality and Diversity

This is a reworking of an earlier post on attachment, to relate it specifically to the series of posts about daycare. 

I want to reflect on the fascinating ideas presented in Different Faces of Attachment: Cultural Variations on a Universal Human Need, edited by Hiltrud Otto and Heidi Keller. This book takes a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural look at attachment, challenging some of the assumptions built into classical attachment theory — assumptions that often go unquestioned in Western psychology.

At its core, the book reaffirms a truth: attachment is universal. Every child seeks connection. Every society finds ways to provide it. But the way attachment is expressed, organized, and supported varies dramatically across cultures.

Classical attachment theory, developed largely in post-war Britain and America, assumes a primary attachment dyad — typically mother and infant — as the cornerstone of healthy development. Yet, as Otto and Keller argue, this model reflects a very specific cultural ideology, rooted in Western middle-class norms of independence, self-expression, and nuclear family structure. It is not universally applicable.

One of the most compelling sections of the book examines cooperative breeding — caregiving systems in which multiple people, not just the biological parents, share responsibility for a child. In many societies, this form of allomaternal care — care from siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or community members — is the norm. These caregivers have both biological and emotional stakes in the child’s survival, and their consistent presence can provide stability equal to, or sometimes greater than, that offered by a single parent.

Ethnographic studies, including examples from the Pirahã people of the Amazon, show distributed patterns of attachment, where infants develop security not through a single primary caregiver, but through a network of relationships. Familiar Western concepts like “stranger anxiety,” “bonding,” or “intimacy” may manifest very differently depending on cultural expectations. What is often treated as universal in developmental psychology is sometimes merely a reflection of Western social norms.

Another thought-provoking concept is delayed personhood. In some societies, infants are not considered full “persons” until they reach a certain age or survive the fragile early months of life. From a Western perspective, this may seem cold, but it can actually function as a protective coping mechanism for mothers in societies with high infant mortality. Attachment, then, adapts — not because love is weaker, but because survival demands resilience and flexibility.

All of this reinforces a central point: universality lies in infant needs; diversity lies in how those needs are met. Infants everywhere need warmth, nourishment, safety, and emotional connection. But the structures that provide these needs — whether a mother-infant dyad, extended family networks, or cooperative caregiving systems — can vary widely.

This has profound implications for how we think about daycare in contemporary Western societies. As we become more individualistic, career-focused, and consumer-driven, infant care is increasingly outsourced to professionals and institutions. Paid daycare, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot replicate the emotional ecosystem created by consistent, invested caregivers in traditional societies. When infants are removed from the consistent presence of responsive adults — and when care is commodified — we risk treating attachment as a service rather than a human need.

The cooperative caregiving systems described in Otto and Keller’s book evolved to meet real infant needs while balancing cultural and economic realities. In contrast, the Western daycare model often prioritizes schedules, efficiency, and adult convenience over infant security and emotional responsiveness. It is not equivalent — and claiming otherwise ignores both cross-cultural evidence and what we know from attachment science.

Different Faces of Attachment does not ask us to discard Bowlby’s foundational ideas. It asks us to expand them: to recognize cultural variation, integrate social and evolutionary insights, and understand that the expression of attachment is flexible, adaptive, and context-dependent. It is a call to rethink our assumptions — to question whether the modern Western focus on professional childcare and institutional routines truly serves the needs of infants, or simply serves adult convenience.

In other words, attachment theory is not a white, middle-class construct. To understand it fully, we must see it through a culturally sensitive lens — one that respects diverse caregiving arrangements and recognizes the ways Western narratives can misrepresent or even undermine infant needs.

Attachment is universal. How we care for infants is not. And if we want to meet their needs — not just survive the demands of modern life — we must pay attention to what different cultures have long understood: connection is not a commodity, and love cannot be scheduled.