Adolescent relationships & Adult results Across Cultures

Love -undefined and undeniable- is the most transcendent and universal experience shared in life. At least, among the human species. Countless sacrificial acts, expressions of art, and cherished artifacts give evidence to the timeless existence of love. Beyond the feeling, love is an act, a choice, and an endless endeavor in humanity. But if doubt stands, for devil's advocate's sake, sociological research supports that in over 186 societies studied, over 88.5% of recorded cultures have artifacts and legends that signify love (Jankowiak & Fischer, 1992). So, even statistically, love can be objectively observed as a major feature of the human experience. 

But, how love is intricately interconnected among interpersonal relationships has implications that are yet to be fully understood. The variation in love types, styles, forms, and effects has ensued a sector of academic research dedicated to relationships. While love’s presence is undoubted, its evaluation is subjective, and the limits of exploring such a variable topic are expansive. 

This blog seeks to specifically analyze how romantic love in adulthood is impacted by parental  love in childhood: on the basis of attachment. The analysis will be undergone with particular respect for social standards and cultural factors that cultivate an adolescent’s impression of love. The purpose is to expand beyond outlooks and biases -in research settings and otherwise- that typically focus on singular societies. Instead, the accumulation of scientific, psychological, and sociological source material investigates the aspects of love from perception to connection, to formulation to dependent upon different contexts. Therefore, we may achieve a more mutual understanding of variation in this universal thing we call love.

Nature versus nurture discourse is recurrent in scientific discussion across disciplines. For those unfamiliar, this is a debate about if an individual’s characteristics are inherent traits or learned behaviors. Considering its complexities, this consideration is a key aspect in studying relationships because it connects past interactions with present actions and future intentions: in this case with regards to romance. Research supports that romantic behaviors correspond with fundamental experiences with primary attachment figures - which are typically parents. Early psychological researchers, like Signmund Freud and John Bowlby, pioneered foundational theories throughout the 19th and 20th centuries regarding  how early childhood relationships create our impressions of love, and translate into how it is expressed later in life. The work of these psychologists contributed to “adult attachment working models”, which are cognitive representations of how individuals perceive and engage with love. As well as the prototype hypothesis that people categorize others and ideas based on an idealized “prototype”: or prospective partners based on parents (Owens et al., 1995). 

These mental projections form our accepted truths, adopted beliefs, and residual attitudes about ourselves and others. Also, these models correspond with attachment styles - anxious, avoidant, and secure - which help classify and communicate psychological archetypes in everyday relationships. These outcomes are valuable to comparatively assess attachment related norms, patterns  and practices across societies, but it is historically flawed to accommodate narrow demographic groups: being stereotypically young, Euro-American, middle-class couples. Instead, the aim of this research is to utilize these findings in correspondence with analyzing commonalities and variabilities in love across cultures.

Personal perceptions dictate reality and interactions. Thus, how youth view their relationship with parents, both in awareness and unconsciousness, helps establish how attachment styles become internalized.

 It was assessed in a social study, conducted by the Journal of Adolescence, that warmth and psychological control in childhood relationships affects avoidance and anxiety in other friendships and romances. The study surveyed Turkish and Belgian adolescent participants between the ages of 14 to 18. It was found that there is a cross-cultural correlation between maternal lack of warmth and resulting child avoidance. Furthermore, there was a link between how low paternal warmth alongside high psychological control causes anxious attachment. However, the results differed culturally when adolescents from Belgian developed avoidance due to high paternal psychological control, while adolescents from Turkey did not show this pattern (Bornstein 2010). 

This suggests that familial power dynamics and the quality of interactions impacts how attachments are formed, but that social standards dependent on culture may influence this formation: hence the variation in results. Thus representing the disparity in relationships dependent on culture.

Multicultural perspectives offer insight into the developmental impact of attachment styles in connection with romantic relationships in adulthood. An analysis of case studies from contrasting cultures around the world may suggest how viable this connection is.

 A study posted in a Social Indicators Research Journal surveyed Americans, Portuguese, and Mozambicans to consider how love styles, relationship experiences, and attachment security contribute to “subjective well-being”. The authors combine the aforementioned scientific literature (of Freud and Bowlby) with the reputable sociologist John Alan Lee’s concept of love styles: Eros (passionate love), Ludus (game-playing love), and Storge (friendship-based love). This contemporary study surveyed 1,582 university students across the 3 countries to measure "subjective well being”, love styles, and previous relationship experiences based on self-reported scales. The data indicated that emotional love styles - like Eros- are positively associated with attachment security, while more unserious love -like Ludus- is negatively associated. Also, that anxious attachment is strongly related to Mania -a very possessive love. (Galinha et al., 2014).

More information is necessary to expand on how cultural norms impact this interaction, and how the societies of respective countries go about their caregiving. While the research didn’t specify which cultures most strongly exemplified the attachment and correspondent love styles, the results validate how this pattern in attachment and romance is evident cross-culturally.

Demographic characteristics and circumstances expands limited knowledge on how change impacts youths’ developmental stages of romantic relationships. Especially in a modern western society, not only exploring different cultures, but their integration shows how love materializes, or doesn’t. 

With this consideration, researchers of a study posted in The International Migration Review aimed to answer the guiding questions of how generational status affects romantic relationships, the likelihood of pursuing sexual-related activities in these contexts, and how parental monitoring affects reports. Researchers used sampling from over 20,000 students - through The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health - to question the participants’ prevalence of romantic relationships, if they shared the same ethnicity, and if they engaged in dating/sex related activities. Results revealed, as may be expected, that increased parental monitoring was associated with lower reporting on romantic relationships, particularly for girls, Furthermore, that first generational girls stood out: they expressed having less desire for romantic relationships, having a higher probability of dating within their ethnicity, and having marginally lower sex-related scores (especially if of Mexican or Cuban ethnicity compared to Chinese/Asian, and European/Canadian demographics) (King et. al., 2007). 

These findings support that the social context and cultural background of a demographic can be predictive of their openness towards romance, at least in adolescence and young adulthood. In the US, immigrants represent a growing proportion of the adolescent population with historically more complex family structures and traditions. Oftentimes, these youth are subject to “inferior” socioeconomic status, linguistic or geographic isolation, more adult responsibilities, and consequently less free time for peer interaction than native-born Americans. Hence, a possibility behind the hesitancy of a first generation child to be involved in romance, especially with the expectations of a migrant parent. This expands beyond cross-cultural implications of parenting and romance, and illustrates how gender and even generation impacts or inhibits these relationships. This understanding furthers how the ability to engage in healthy romance, at least early on in life, is not only tied to treatment by a parent, but the treatment of families in societies.

While there may be disparity dependent on a culturally and parentally dictated perspective, multicultural insight helps us understand how adult relationships of different natures are a result of attachment from different childhood nurture. Cross-culturally, this research supports that responsive caregiving is fundamental to healthy attachments, which in turn facilitate caregiving adult relationships. Meanwhile, the social context of a culture’s caregiving can discourage romantic attachment for certain demographics. Love is truly transcendent, it surpasses merely physical or ordinary human experience. But our abilities to feel loved, act in love, and choose love are grounded in the realities dictated by past, present, and future contexts. It may be created in childhood, and explored in adolescence, but how we translate our personal impression of love into universal expressions is up to us.

With Love,

Brooke Bernhardt

Works Cited

Galinha, I. C., Oishi, S., Pereira, C. R., Wirtz, D., & Esteves, F. (2014). Adult Attachment, Love Styles, Relationship Experiences and Subjective Well-Being: Cross-Cultural and Gender Comparison between Americans, Portuguese, and Mozambicans. Social Indicators Research, 119(2), 823–852. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24721457

Güngör, D., & Bornstein, M. H. (2010). Culture-general and -specific associations of attachment avoidance and anxiety with perceived parental warmth and psychological control among Turk and Belgian adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 33(5), 593–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2009.12.005

Jankowiak, W. R., & Fischer, E. F. (1992). A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love. Ethnology, 31(2), 149–155. https://doi.org/10.2307/3773618.

King, R. B., & Harris, K. M. (2007). Romantic Relationships among Immigrant Adolescents. The International Migration Review, 41(2), 344–370. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27645669.

Owens, G., Crowell, J. A., Pan, H., Treboux, D., O’Connor, E., & Waters, E. (1995). The Prototype Hypothesis and the Origins of Attachment Working Models: Adult Relationships with Parents and Romantic Partners. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60(2/3), 216–233. https://doi.org/10.2307/116618

I have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not.