Bishop, E G, & DiLalla, L.F. (1995). The effect of gender on mother-infant interaction. Poster presented to the University Women’s Professional Advancement Poster Session, May, Carbondale, IL.

The goal of this study was to determine whether infant gender impacted on mother –infant interaction at 7, 9, 14, and 24 months of age. Mother infant interaction was assessed using a global, behaviorally-based coding scheme inspired by the coding scheme of Pianta and Castaldi (1990). This project included subjects who were participants in two larger, longitudinal twin studies (Twin Infant Project- TIP: DiLalla et al., 1990; Benson et al., 1993; MacArthur Longitudinal twin Study-MLTS: Plomin et al., 1993). For the present study on a subset of 92 twin pairs, subjects were treated as singletons, meaning that 184 mother-infant interactions were coded at each age.

Mothers were assessed on: Sensitivity to Cues from the Child, Respect for Autonomy, Quality of Instruction, and Warmth. Infants were assessed on: Affection for Mother, Enthusiasm for Interaction with Mother, Reliance on Mother for Help (14 and 24 months only), Task Orientation, and Negativity.

Results showed virtually no gender differences either for mother treatment of children or children’s behaviors.