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surprisingly, infants of all ages showed more attachment behaviors toward fathers than toward mothers. Infants may have shown a father-preference because fathers engage infants in more play than do mothers, especially in the second to third years of life (Clarke-Stewart, 1978; Paquette, 2004). Moreover, infants raised primarily by fathers seek comfort from their fathers, rather than their mothers, under stressful conditions (Geiger, 1996; Lamb, 1977). Thus, Lamb’s work was revolutionary for its time in underscoring the glaring limi- tations of a mother-only attachment focus. Beyond fathers, many other people share in the care of infants around the globe, as, for example, in the communal childrearing practices of traditional Israeli Kibbutzim, collective settlements in which members of the community share their material possessions and wealth. In traditional Kibbutz, children spend their time in a house with other children under the watch of multiple professional caregivers, visiting their parents only a few hours per day. When tested in the Strange Situation, infants in Kibbutzim were found to develop attachments with their nonparental, professional caregivers (Sagi et al., 1995) ( FIGURE 7.21 ). Infants’ formation of attachments with multiple caregivers has sparked research into howmembers of such communities distribute responsibility for the care of children among multiple individuals rather than a single person (Keller & Bard, 2017; Morelli et al., 2017; LeVine, 2014). When infants are raised in communities with distributed childcare arrangements, they do not develop a primary attachment relationship with only a single person, and rarely display stranger anxiety (e.g., Keller & Bard, 2017; Otto & Keller, 2014). In fact, a meta-analysis of 40 investigations involving nearly 3,000 children ages birth to 3 years found that children were likely to form secure attach- ments to nonparental care providers who displayed high sensitivity to them and other children under their care (Ahnert, Pinquart, & Lamb, 2006). (Note that forming attachments to nonparent caregivers does not interfere with infants’ development of attachment to their parents!)

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Kibbutz A kim Archive/CC BY-SA 3.0 FIGURE 7.21  Communal childrearing practices.  Infants in Kibbutzim develop attachments with their nonparental, professional caregivers. UNIVERSITY PRESS