Early interactions and child gender in chilean single mothers families

Abstract

A transversal study of mother-child interactions in Chilean, low income, single mother families, was developed considering child gender differences. Participants were 80 dyads, with 39 girls and 41 boys with ages distributed between 4 and 15 months old. The dyadic interaction quality was evaluated with the Care-Index instrument. High depression and maternal stress scores were found, as well as a quality of interaction average, which indicates the need for intervention, showing the vulnerability in the dyads of the study. Dyads with boys showed significantly more difficult behavior with their mothers than girls, who showed significantly more passive behavior than boys. The observed effect sizes differences are moderate in both cases. Complementary behaviors in mothers and children are observed, resulting significant correlations between maternal sensitivity and infant cooperativeness, maternal control and difficult infants behaviors, and between non-responsive behavior of mothers and passive behavior in children. The findings are discussed from existing theories related to child gender and early interactions in the context of single parents in charge of the mother.