It is an undisputed fact among attachment researchers that children need stability and continuity in their caregiving environment for optimal developmental outcomes. However, anthropological studies show that informal and often temporally limited kinship-based foster care, including changes of children's primary caregivers, is widespread in some cultural contexts and considered normative and thus beneficial for children. Based on ethnographic interviews with Nso families in northwestern Cameroon, we analyzed the dynamics of caregiving arrangements and relational networks during infancy and early childhood. Exploring household compositions, caregiving responsibilities, children's preferred caregivers, and foster care arrangements revealed multiple caregiver networks, with the importance of the mother decreasing and the importance of alloparents and peers increasing as the children grow older. Also, families have fluid boundaries, with about one-third of the children changing households in the first three years of life. The Nso children's experiences reflect a relational cultural model of infant care as a cooperative task and a communal conception of attachment. The results are discussed in relation to attachment theory's claims about universal patterns of development.

中文翻译：

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在 Nso 长大：儿童出生后头三年关系网络的变化和连续性

依恋研究人员认为，儿童需要稳定和连续的照料环境才能获得最佳发展结果，这是一个无可争议的事实。然而，人类学研究表明，非正式且通常在时间上有限的基于亲属关系的寄养，包括儿童主要照顾者的变化，在某些文化背景下很普遍，被认为是规范的，因此对儿童有益。基于对喀麦隆西北部 Nso 家庭的民族志访谈，我们分析了婴儿期和幼儿期看护安排和关系网络的动态变化。探索家庭构成、照料责任、儿童首选照料者和寄养安排揭示了多个照料者网络，随着孩子年龄的增长，母亲的重要性下降，异父父母和同龄人的重要性增加。此外，家庭的边界是流动的，大约三分之一的儿童在出生后的头三年内更换了家庭。Nso 儿童的经历反映了将婴儿护理作为一项合作任务和共同的依恋概念的关系文化模式。讨论的结果与依恋理论关于普遍发展模式的主张有关。