Poster #84 - Multiple Attachment, Family Function, and Children's Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Matrilineal Mosuo

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

The Mosuo are a matrilineal group of approximately 50,000 people located in southwestern China. Mosuo women do not marry but rather practice sese (visiting marriage). In sese, a man spends the night with a woman and then returns to his home the next day. Sese is considered a strictly monogamous and ethical arrangement. It is forbidden for Mosuo to have sese with more than one partner at a time. Second, in a matrilineal family, the mother and children live together. The husband lives with his mother and siblings rather than with his wife and children. The children are the descendants of the woman’s maternal lineage. While it is true that the man has little responsibility for his biological children, he is fully responsible for the children of his sisters. Currently, they have maintained relatively intact matrilineal cultural and social traditions, and families are still formed matrilineally (Zhang et al., 2019; Yan et al., 2008; Thomas et al., 2018).

It is worthwhile to confirm attachment relationships with multiple significant others' (attachment network) influence on children's development through Mosuo's sibling-based extended family. However, no research has been conducted on how multiple attachment relationships affect Mosuo children's social-emotional development. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between multi-attachment, family function, and cognitive-emotional development in the extended families of Mosuo.

Participants: 859 participants were recruited from Ninglang County, Yunan province in May of 2022. In the study, Mosuo (N=304, M=15.31, SD=3.4, Female=174) and non-Mosuo (N=311, M=14.12, SD=1.95, Female=168; including Han and Yi patrilineal families with similar family structures) families were analyzed.

Matireals: 1) Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment-Revised (IPPA-R)| The scale includes three parallel versions (mother, father, and peers) that assess attachment quality. Each version has 25 items, yielding scores for the Trust, Communication, and Alienation subscales. IPPA-R was also used in this study to assess the mother, father, grandmother, uncle, and aunt of the Mosuo children. 2) Family Assessment Device (FAD)| A 60-item questionnaire that measures an individual’s perceptions of his/her family (Epstein et al., 1983). It contains seven sub-factors as follows: "Problem solving, Communication, Roles, Affective Responsiveness, Affective Involvement, Behavior Control, General Functioning". 3) Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ)| The CERQ is designed to measure specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies (Garnefski et al., 2002).

Analysis: 1) Identify the characteristics of attachment, family functioning, and cognitive emotion regulation scores, and analyze how they are affected by moderating variables such as gender, family size (members number), family income, and parent education. Compare Mosuo and non-Mosuo groups. 2) Develop a model that validates the relationship between attachment, family functioning, and the cognitive-emotional regulation of children. Moreover, it will be possible to compare the impact of primary monotropy attachments (mother), parallel attachments (mother or father or grandmother), and comprehensive attachments (all caregivers) models.
Hypothesis: A high-quality attachment to the mother (v.s. fahter&mother; grandmother&mother; all caregivers mean level) facilitates children's cognitive emotion regulation by enhancing family function.

Author

• Jue Wang, University of Tokyo
  Presenting Author