9417938 Freedman This award supports a planning visit for joint research between Dr. Guoan Yue, Professor of Sociology (and Psychology) at Nankai University, Tianjin, Peoples Republic of China, and a research group headed by the Principal Investigator, Daniel Freedman, at the University of Chicago. It is a study of social attachment in early childhood across two generations, and it uses current observation (via videotape) and recollections via an interview and questionnaire. It is a cross-cultural study in that comparable data have been previously obtained from Icelanders, Korean-Americans and Bengali-Americans. The purpose of the study is to address the issue of cultural relativity versus cultural universals with regard to mother-child attachments. The study will address a series of questions: Are there recognizable, culture-specific patterns of mother-child attachments? Are cultural patterns of mother-child relationships resistant to change across generations? Are historically based societal shifts sufficient to change such patterns? If mother- child relational patterns prove resistant to change, or if they do not, which theoretical framework best accounts for the facts?
