Transnational Infancy: A New Context for Attachment and the Need for Better Models

Abstract

Abstract— Researchers have paid little attention to the effects of a rapidly globalizing world on infants and toddlers, even though some features of globalization may have a significant impact on their development and well‐being. For example, fragmentation occurs in many North American and European transnational families when infants are separated from parents and cared for by geographically distant relatives, as is the case when new immigrants temporarily leave their infants in their country of origin or send them back to be cared for by relatives. There is much reason to believe that such separations can have an adverse effect on attachment, the emotional development of children, and the adjustment of parents. Yet Western mental‐health models may not accurately capture the full complexity of these new realities, nor adequately address risk and resiliency factors in clinical contexts. This article argues that it is the time to devote attention to the experience of infants and toddlers who exist in transnational environments, as these very young children may well be the most overlooked participants in globalization. This article proposes a model to support an emergent field of research, policy making, and practice.

Informal Kinship‐Based Fostering Around the World: Anthropological Findings

“…It should be remembered that fostering may be a response to a difficult situation that is itself traumatizing, such as epidemics (Brown, ) or historical practices of separating colonized children from their parents (Bohr, ), making it impossible to determine whether the foster situation or the traumatic event has increased the child's risk. To evaluate informal kinship‐based fostering fairly, it should be taken as axiomatic that extreme cases can be incredibly harmful for children.…”

“…The field of child development generally accepts the premise of attachment theory that a stable relationship with a key caregiver is essential in a child's early years (Bohr, ). Informal kinship‐based fostering is thus seen as problematic for a child's development because it exposes the child to relationships with many caregivers.…”

“…Informal kinship‐based fostering is thus seen as problematic for a child's development because it exposes the child to relationships with many caregivers. However, anthropologists strongly caution against using attachment theory indiscriminately, arguing that it reflects the outcomes of specific, Western child‐rearing practices and ideologies and is not applicable in other cultural contexts where maternal thinking and child attachment patterns differ (Barlow, ; Bohr, ; Keller, ; Lancy, ; LeVine, , ; LeVine & Miller, ; LeVine & Norman, ; Mageo, ; Otto, , ; Quinn & Mageo, ; Rogoff, Mistry, Goncu, & Mosier, ; Scheper‐Hughes, ; Seymour, ). Indeed anthropologists argue that having many caregivers is not only benign but can actually result in many meaningful affective relationships supporting a child's development (Seymour, ).…”

Affects of unease: mother–infant separation among professional Indonesian women working in Singapore

“…Within a context of transnational family migration, surprisingly few studies of contemporary transnational migration describe separation between birth mothers and infants (namely children under the age of 18 months) (but see Bohr 2010;Madianou and Miller 2011;Whitfield 2014). Researchers tend to lump infants in with older children, and pay surprisingly little attention to the place infants might hold in migrant family practices.…”

‘Why I Sent My Child Away’

“…Because research examining long-distance parenting that is undertaken outside of resource scarcity is somewhat new (e.g., 'kirogi parenting'), the effects of this separation on the parents and children is not yet quite understood. On the one hand, some researchers have suggested that this separation may have serious long-term consequences particularly because of disruptions in the parent-child attachment or relationship (Bohr, 2010;Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, & Louie, 2002). On the other hand, several scholars have argued for a need to expand theoretical approaches towards the child-caregiver relationships to include cultural models of childcare that may involve the broader family and community as primary attachment and caregiving figures (e.g., see volume by Quinn & Mageo, 2013).…”