Through Colombian Lenses: Ethnographic and Conventional Analyses of Maternal Care and Their Associations With Secure Base Behavior

According to attachment theory, the quality of care plays a key role in the organization of infants ’ secure base behavior across contexts and cultures. Yet information about attachment relationships in a variety of cultures is scarce, and questions remain as to whether Ainsworth’s conceptualization of early care quality (sensitivity; M. D. S. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978) is appropriate for characterizing caregiving behavior in different groups and whether culturally specific descriptions of early care are related to conventional measures of maternal sensitivity and to infants ’ security. In this naturalistic study of mother–infant interactions in Colombia, scores on different domains of maternal care were obtained through ethnographic methodology, and conventional Q-sort scores for maternal and infant behavior were obtained. Findings are discussed in terms of the cross-cultural generality of the sensitivity construct and the sensitivity–security link and of the relevance of naturalistic open-ended studies in different contexts. Bowlby’s (1982) and Ainsworth’s (1969) theory of the infant– mother tie as a secure base relationship focuses on the role of the primary caregiver as a secure base from which an infant can explore and learn about the environment and close relationships