Cultural spaces of popularized psychological knowledge: Attachment parenting in Turkey

Abstract

The psychological concept of attachment is constantly evolving. Approximately 70 years after attachment theory was first introduced by John Bowlby in the late 1940s, the notion of attachment is still in flux with continually changing ideas of what it means to be a good parent. One path along which attachment as a concept is moving from academia to everyday life is the philosophy of attachment parenting which was first established in the US by William and Martha Sears. Ideas about attachment theory and attachment parenting are frequently accompanied by critical comments on “Western” cultures. This critical perspective on modernity, individualism, and autonomy is portrayed in the first part of this article. The second part traces attachment as a concept transferred to Turkey. Rather than studying academic work on attachment in Turkey, this article focuses on popularized versions of attachment theory which gain ground as part of the parenting philosophy of attachment parenting. This article analyzes parents’ blogs, websites, self-help books, fieldwork protocols, and interviews with parenting trainers and parents themselves. It focuses on how popular scientific use of attachment parenting in Turkey is accompanied by discussions of cultural identity, cultural values, and belonging. The article shows that attachment theory and parenting are used in quite diverse ways to comment on Turkish (parenting) culture, ranging from anglophile readings to more conservative appropriations of attachment theory as Anatolian education. These forms of popularizing attachment theory challenge the sociological concept of psychologization.

Modernization of Parenting Styles in Turkey from Past to Present: Adolescence and Adulthood

“…Arıkan and Kumru, (2021) present 4 classifications of parenting behavior: (a) authoritative (high in both demandingness and responsiveness); (b) authoritarian (high in demandingness but low in responsiveness); (c) permissive or indulgent (high in responsiveness but low in demandingness); and (d) rejecting-neglecting (low in both responsiveness and demandingness) Which parenting style is appropriate for the Turkish society is the question Turkish researchers and psychologists are trying to answer. Although the number of the studies related to parenting in Turkey for different age groups has increased in the last fifty years, it can be said that the studies for infancy (Boztepe et al, 2020;Sieben & Yıldırır, 2020;Yavuz & Selcuk, 2018) and early childhood parenting (Acar et al, 2019;Aytac et al, 2019) are somewhat limited. Therefore, this review focuses predominantly on the relationships of Turkish adolescents and adults with their parents from past to present.…”

Longing for interdependence, aspiring to independence: a qualitative study on parenting in Germany

“…At the same time, there are competing ideas about closeness and distance. One example is 'attachment parenting', which has been described as an example of intensive parenting (Faircloth, 2013;Simonardóttir, 2016;Sieben and Yıldırır, 2020). Whereas attachment parents emphasise bodily and emotional closeness, others criticise this parenting style as being overly protective and a hindrance to the development of independence.…”

“…Long before it was seen to shape contemporary parenting culture, it stimulated attachment research in psychology as far back as the 1940s. As argued elsewhere (Kanieski, 2010;Sieben and Yıldırır, 2020), attachment research can be understood as a response to modern forms of childrearing that were clustered around ideas of bodily distance, technically mediated parenting, hygiene and discipline via training programmes in the early 20th century. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, parenting adapted to the cultural values of Gesellschaft-type economies.…”