Representations of attachment security, attachment avoidance, and gender in Ugandan children

ABSTRACT

Researchers returned to the home of Mary Ainsworth’s original attachment study to explore the contributions of Ugandan children’s representations of attachment interactions with their caregivers to their perceptions about gender. Researchers administered the Attachment Story-Completion Task (ASCT) and applied three attachment narrative coding systems and a gender stereotypes typology to the ASCT stories of 51 Ugandan children ages 5–7. Nine attachment narrative variables were applied to the children’s responses to a series of five attachment story stems told using a family of dolls. The narratives emerging from the children’s responses to these story stems were also coded independently for 14 masculine and 14 feminine gender stereotypes. Empathic relations among the dolls and narrative coherence were positively correlated with counterstereotypical gender representations only in girls. Attachment representations of a rejecting father were positively correlated with stereotypical gender representations only in boys. Representations of attachment avoidance were negatively correlated with counterstereotypical gender representations in both boys and girls. The findings suggested two different trajectories for the development of gender representation flexibility in boys and girls. This study contextualizes these findings against the backdrop of a country with rigid sex roles and a fast-growing child population.

Keywords:

• gender stereotypes
• child attachment representations
• story stems
• cross-cultural
• Africa
• internal working model

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the members of the research team who made this study possible: Daniel Ahimbisibwe, Ssewanyana Baker, Aimee Gallagher, Karen Gubert, Tina Lo, Gorreth Nakyato, Paula Patino, Julius Ssentume, and Alicia Witt. We also wish to thank Dr. Kate Parry for her ongoing support of the Kitengesa Community Library Research Project. The authors gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the children and caregivers who participated in this study. For more information about this research, please visit http://www.rurallibrariesresearchnetwork.net.

Disclosure statement

This manuscript does not involve any breach of confidentiality, privacy, professional ethics, or copyright, nor does it contain any potentially libelous matter. We have complied with the American Psychological Association’s ethical standards in the treatment of our sample. If you have any questions for us, please contact us.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this study is supported by an extramural grant from the International Psychoanalytical Association.