Attachment Behavior in Thirteen‐month‐old, Opposite Sex Twins

Abstract

Seventeen sets of opposite sex twins, 13 to 14 months old, were observed in a playroom situation with their mothers. Attachment behaviors, toy preference, style of play, and activity level were recorded. Analysis of four attachment behaviors indicated that girls looked at, vocalized to, and maintained proximity with their mothers significantly more often than did their brothers. Girls also touched their mothers more often, although this difference was not significant. The style of play and activity level measures revealed no sex differences. In terms of specific toy preferences, girls tended to play with the cat and dog more, while boys tended to play more with the pull toy. No other differences in toy preference were found. The effects of social class, activity level, and separation from the mother on infant attachment behavior are discussed. The importance of the mother as a socializing and sex‐typing agent is stressed.

A typology of the three-year-old twin sibling relationship drawn from two different environments: School and home

“…By contrast, co-twin independence appears to be associated at school with girl-boy pairs. This result is in line with the idea that mixed-sex twins are differentiated the most by their parents since early childhood, as demonstrated in several studies on dress practices (Brooks & Lewis, 1974;Goshen-Gottstein, 1981;Robin, Josse, Kheroua, Casati, & Tourette, 1994). Moreover, some studies have shown that already by preschool age, friendships are formed on the basis of sex identification (La Freniere, Strayer, & Gauthier, 1984).…”

Linguistic skills of 16- and 23-month-old twins and singletons in a triadic context

“…These findings were very similar to those of Savic (1980), who found that twins came to use possessives sooner and more frequently than singletons and who interpreted these data as a more rapid movement through the steps of using 'I' and a sign of a strong motivation to be differentiated. Incidentally such precocious indices of self-awareness allow us to revisit the prevalent claim that twins' mothers do not scaffold an early access to self-other differentiation within the twin dyad (Brooks & Lewis 1974, Goshen-Gottstein 1981, Lytton 1980, Lytton, Conway & Sauve 1977, Robin, Corroyer & Casati 1996). Rather, our results are better understood in the light of Clark & Dickman's (1984) description of the twins' mother who rarely maintained her attention on one twin because she very frequently shifted her visual attention to the co-twin.…”

Childcare Patterns of Mothers of Twins During the First Year

“…Other studies have shown that monozygotic twins are treated in a more similar fashion than dizygotic twins (Loehlin & Nichols, 1976;Cohen, Dibble & Grawe, 1977). The greatest difference exists in the case of different-sex twins, and mothers of such twins can be expected to find it easier to treat the children as two distinct individuals (Brooks & Lewis, 1974;Goshen-Gottstein, 1981).…”