As originally conceived and still practiced today, attachment theory is limited in its ability to recognize and understand cross-cultural variations in human attachment systems, and it is restrictive in its inclusion of cross-species comparisons. This chapter argues that attachment must be reconceived to account for and include cross-cultural and cross-species perspectives. To provide a foundation for rethinking attachment, two universal functions of attachment systems are proposed: they provide (a) socially organized resources for the infant’s protection and psychobiological regulation and (b) a privileged entry point for social learning. Ways of understanding the nature of the cultural and ecological contexts that organize attachment systems are suggested, so that they can be recognized as culturally specific, normative behavior. Culturally valid methods for describing children’s attachment systems are also discussed. In conclusion, a wide range of research strategies are proposed to facilitate the extension and contextual validity of measures of attachment across cultures and species.

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This study investigated tadpole self-drawings from 183 three- to six-year-old children living in seven cultural groups, representing three ecosocial contexts. Based on assumed general production principles, the influence of cultural norms and values upon specific characteristics of the tadpole drawings was examined. The results demonstrated that children from all cultural groups realized the body-proportion effect in the self-drawings, indicating universal production principles. However, children differed in single drawing characteristics, depending on the specific ecosocial context. Children from Western and non-Western urban educated contexts drew themselves rather tall, with many facial features, and preferred smiling facial expressions, while children from rural traditional contexts depicted themselves significantly smaller, with less facial details, and neutral facial expressions.

In the present study, we examined the family drawings of preschool-aged children from three cultural contexts that represented different aspects of autonomy and relatedness. The final sample consisted of 53 children from urban Western middle-class families from Osnabrueck, Germany; 63 children from rural Cameroonian Nso farming families; and 59 children from urban middle-class families from Ankara, Turkey. The children were of similar age and did not differ in basic drawing abilities. The family drawings varied with cultural context and the respective orientation toward autonomy and relatedness, specifically in regard to the number and position of family members, the depicted absolute and relative size of family members, the details of facial features, and the emotional expression. Additionally, the positioning and spatial arrangement of family members on the paper can be linked to the children’s familiarity with external frames of reference in drawings.

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