Anglo and Puerto Rican mothers' perceptions of attachment: Preliminary findings from the Island

Resumen

This investigation used the procedure developed by Harwood (1992) with Anglo and migrant Puerto Rican mothers to examine cultural differences in indigenous concepts of desirable and undesirable attachment behavior among 27 middle - and lower - class Puerto Rican mothers living on the island. Of particular interest was (a) whether similar cultural differences would be obtained using Puerto Rican mothers from the island as were obtained using migrant mothers living on the mainland United States (Harwood, 1992; Harwood & Miller, 1991), and (b) to what extent these cross-cultural finding would be true of middle class as well as of the lower class Puerto Rican mothers living in Puerto Rico place more emphasis than do Anglo mothers on the child's aility to maintain proper demeanor in a public context, and less emphasis on the maximization of self as an autonomous unit. Moreover, cultural group membership was consistently the single largest predictor or significant variance in the regression analyses, suggesting the presence of core cultural values which obtain across socioeconomic status.