Mother-Infant Relationships in Japan: Attachment, Dependency, and Amae

Dependency and attachment are distinct concepts describing the mother-child relationship in infancy. The Japanese indigenous concept of amae indicates a specific quality of relationships, namely. interdependence, which is not captured by the Western concepts of attachment and dependency. Eight Japanese behavioral scientists were asked to describe amae using the Attachment Q-Sort. First, this description of amae was compared with descriptions of the concepts of dependency and attachment security, as provided by Western experts. Second, the expert descriptions were used to derive scores on each of the three concepts for a sample of Japanese infants. Both analyses showed that amae and dependency are highly similar and that both concepts are unrelated to attachment security. Furthermore, counter to our expectations, it was found that Japanese mothers consider attachment security to be the most desirable of the three concepts, whereas amae is considered the least desirable.