QUALITY OF THE MOTHER-CHILD INTERACTION, ATTENDANCE TO DAY NURSERIES AND IMPORTANCE OF THE STARTING AGE: COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CHILEAN SINGLE-MOTHER FAMILIES

Abstract

The study is about the quality of mother-child interactions in Chilean, single-mother, low-income families, considering the children's attendance to day nurseries and their starting age before and after they are 6 months old. The sample is of 80 dyads, with children between the 4 and 15 months old, and the quality of the interactions is evaluated with the Care-Index instrument. The dyads without attendance to day nurseries show higher quality interactions on the affective aspects, with a middle effect size. The dyads with children starting attendance before becoming six months old show significantly inferior quality interactions to the ones observed in the dyads of children who started attending after that age, medium and large effect sizes.