The target article proposes a solution to the problem of overrepresentation of participants from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan& Norenzayan, Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010) by implementing the “WILD” approach via five key steps for renovating existing theories. The paper does a convincing job of pulling apart both the a priori and empirical bases for two major theories in developmental psychology: shared intentionality and attachment theory. As researchers who largely agree with this approach, we have suggestions for how to take this further – from remixing methods and adjusting sampling to full-on pushing for decolonization of theory, including devolving power and influence to participants and their communities.

Such a push would improve the human behavioral sciences by addressing the ethical considerations of working with globally vulnerable populations (Broesch et al., Reference Broesch, Crittenden, Beheim, Blackwell, Bunce, Colleran, Hagel, Kline, McElreath, Nelson, Pisor, Prall, Pretelli, Purzycki, Quinn, Ross, Scelza, Starkweather, Stieglitz and Mulder2020), increasing scientific accuracy (Kline, Shamsudheen, & Broesch& Broesch, Reference Kline, Shamsudheen and Broesch2018) and ecological validity (Wen et al., Reference Wen, Amir, Clegg, Davis, Dutra, Kline, Lew-Levy, MacGillivray, Pamei, Wang, Xu and Rawlings2025), and raising neglected elements of theory, such as the embodiment of cultural beliefs and experiences (Baker et al., Reference Baker, Lozano, Shrestha, Kayser and Adair2025). However, there is a broader “why” to ask here: if psychology to date is essentially the most in-depth and quantitatively rigorous ethnographic examination of the “WEIRD” cultural community, does it need to be renovated? Or do we simply need to retitle our fields? Developmental Psychology could be titled Coming of Age in the West, for example. We agree with the authors that reframing WEIRD studies as being culturally bound is not sufficient. Further, we argue that it does a disservice to the global majority and ultimately misrepresents much of what is happening in the West – particularly for parents, children, and child-rearing practices.

For example, while attachment theory focuses on the supposed role of the primary caregiver in a nuclear family household, this is not even representative of households in the West. Learning to parent has traditionally been community-based, but demographic shifts, rising living costs, and changing household compositions (from multigenerational to nuclear) have weakened kin support for parents and have isolated households. With this decreasing cohesion, the resource demands of child-rearing on parents have intensified.

Amidst this shift, parents in the West have come to rely increasingly on paid alloparents such as nurseries and childminders (70% of 3-year-olds, 85% of 4-year-olds, and 95% of 5-year-olds, OECD, 2017); 75.6% of mothers in the UK are economically active, the highest level in 20 years (Murphy et al., Reference Murphy, Dennes and Harris2022). Where parents are working full-time, children are spending much of their time with alloparents. This arrangement is sometimes criticized in public spaces (Cosslett, Reference Cosslett2023; Glosswitch, 2013) but is supported by government efforts to get birth parents “back to work,” including partial subsidies for working parents (BBC News, 2023). In this context, attachment theory’s assumptions of a single primary caregiver are a clear misfit to the situation: even the “WEIRD” kids are not without additional caregivers, and the vast majority of parents are reliant on allo-parental support. We might imagine that attachment theory was applicable in a past era where “trad wives” occupied the position of stay-at-home parents – but from the 1960s to the present day, parents have spent more time with their children, not less (Vagni, Reference Vagni2023), despite the rise in dual-income households.

This also matters from an applied standpoint. Of Western parents surveyed, ∼60% reported little/no childcare experience prior to parenting, and 78% had unanswered parenting questions (Kline, Baker, Adair Adair, Reference Kline, Baker and Adair2024). Parents often turn to social media to fill the knowledge gap (Pretorius, Johnson, & Rew& Rew, Reference Pretorius, Johnson and Rew2019) and to seek social support in general (Haslam, Tee, & Baker & Baker, Reference Haslam, Tee and Baker2017). This need for knowledge and lack of support are reiterated in studies of parenting anxiety among Finnish parents (Sihvonen, Reference Sihvonen2023), where individualized parenting support compares negatively to communal approaches. The lack of co-parent and social support is one factor contributing to parental burnout (Mikolajczak & Roskam, Reference Mikolajczak and Roskam2020). Some of the assumptions about “normal” Western parenting cultures in attachment theory appear to contribute to pathologies and poor mental health among Western parents. This was especially noticeable during the holistic shutdown of parenting support during COVID-19 (Gruber et al., Reference Gruber, Prinstein, Clark, Rottenberg, Abramowitz, Albano, Aldao, Borelli, Chung, Davila, Forbes, Gee, Hall, Hallion, Hinshaw, Hofmann, Hollon, Joormann, Kazdin and Weinstock2021). If the picture of “normal” parent-child attachment rests on assumptions about home life that are potentially harmful for present-day Western parents, then who is the theory for in the first place? If attachment theory has rested on misbeliefs about parenting in Western contexts, it does not bode well as our starting point for the future of studying human development.

We think an even more radical approach is needed: for decolonizing to take place, as researchers, we need to implement greater transparency and thorough reflexivity (in quantitative work as well as qualitative). This means prioritizing inferential and descriptive work – including in Western populations – as the basis for any theory development. Doing so can address limitations and biases introduced into the scientific method. Reflexivity is standard in qualitative research and should be so in qualitative work too (Jamieson, Govaart, & Pownall& Pownall, Reference Jamieson, Govaart and Pownall2023; Steltenpohl, Siegel, & Klement& Klement, Reference Steltenpohl, Siegel and Klement2021). This requires acknowledging the researcher’s influence on the research question, design, and analysis, and ultimately the inferences made from the data. Descriptive, community-led work can place checks on researcher biases by requiring transparency and accountability. This goes beyond having more inclusive and diverse samples, which instigate a step-wise readjustment of theory once it is demonstrably wrong in one culture or another – a process we have nicknamed the “ethnographic veto.”

We are confident that more can be accomplished by (particularly Western) researchers asking themselves the following questions: (a) how can I devolve power and control over this research to my prospective participants, and (b) what would this research question/theory be if designed from the ground up by people in the relevant cultural community? This does not mean abandoning cross-cultural human universals; it does mean that the level of abstraction of those universals is likely to rise from that of behavioral descriptions (e.g., patterns of eye gaze in joint attention) to the level of adaptive problems (e.g., humans sharing a need for coordination with their infants through many possible modalities and modalities of communication). This approach has been useful in creating a common framework for the cross-cultural and cross-species study of teaching (Kline, Reference Kline2015, Reference Kline2016). Where attachment theory is concerned, the shared adaptive challenge is the altriciality of human infants and their varying levels/types of vulnerability in different environments, creating a need for long-term and often intensive caretaking. Western parents may meet this need through emotional bonds and close monitoring and response via distal communication; many communities across the global majority may solve this through bodily proximity, anticipation of needs, and tactile communication. These are not the only options – future instantiations of attachment theory need to remain behaviorally open and can do so by focusing on shared adaptive challenges and indigenous methods and questions prior to proposing specific “universal” solutions.