Volume 20, Issue 2
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-childinteractions in Chilean, single-mother, low-income families,considering the children's attendance to day nurseries and theirstarting age before and after they are 6 months old. The sample isof 80 dyads, with children between the 4 and 15 months old, andthe quality of the interactions is evaluated with the Care-Indexinstrument. The dyads without attendance to day nurseries showhigher quality interactions on the affective aspects, with a middleeffect size. The dyads with children starting attendance beforebecoming six months old show significantly inferior qualityinteractions to the ones observed in the dyads of children whostarted attending after that age, medium and large effect sizes.
Keywords
early interactions, single-mother families, day nurseries