Gender and patterns of emotional availability in mother–toddler and father–toddler dyads

Abstract

Recent research has revealed gender differences in emotional communication and affect regulation during early mother-child interactions that are consistent with later gender differences in relational behavior. The current study extends those findings to father-child interactions. Parent-toddler dyads were videotaped during quiet indoor play when the toddlers were 19 and 24 months old. The observations were coded with Biringen, Robinson, and Emde's (1998) Emotional Availability scales (3rd ed.), which yields scores for parent sensitivity, structuring, nonintrusiveness, and nonhostility, and for child responsiveness to and involvement of the parent. Analyses of mean differences revealed a consistent pattern of larger parent than child gender differences. Dyadic analyses revealed more complex results. Mother-daughter dyads displayed the highest scores, followed by mother-son, then father-daughter, and finally father-son dyads for all variables but hostility, which by 24 months was higher in same-sex than in opposite-sex dyads. Scores for father-son dyads more often fell below the scale point indicating "good enough" parenting than scores for other dyads. The inclusion of fathers in the sample extends previous findings both by eliciting an increased range of variation within child gender and by providing a first look at the emotional availability of fathers relative to that of mothers.

Parental Sensitivity Towards Toddlers and Infant Siblings Predicting Toddler Sharing and Compliance

“…The finding that mothers were more sensitive than fathers is in line with findings of previous studies (Lovas 2005;Volling et al 2002). Mothers are often the primary caregiver and therefore they are more familiar with the signals of the child which may make them more sensitive than fathers, see Hallers-Haalboom et al (2014).…”

Korelasyonel Bakiş Açisiyla Çocuk-Anne Ve Çocuk-Öğretmen İli̇şki̇leri̇ni̇n Ve Ci̇nsi̇yet Faktörünün İncelenmesi̇

“…Researchers have shown that gender could be a critical factor in relationships formed with adults. Thus as Lovas (2005) reported similar findings were obtained from mothers and fathers which means both parties were found to be more sensitive with their daughters than their sons. Similarly daughters were found to be more responsive and involved during interactions with their mothers and fathers compared to sons.…”

“…Compared to earlier researches, this finding seemed to have contradictory results especially in terms of parent's perception and gender. For example, Lovas (2005) has found that both mothers and fathers are more sensitive with daughters than with sons, and daughters are more responsive and involved in their relationships both with mothers and fathers than sons. Similarly Colarossi and Eccles (2003) found that boys and girls perceived least support from fathers although they couldn't find any gender differences in perceived support from mothers and teachers.…”

Mary Ainsworth’s legacy: a systematic review of observational instruments measuring parental sensitivity

“…It has been applied to mothers as well as fathers (e.g., Atzaba-Poria et al, 2010;Lovas, 2005), generally in free-play settings. The 4th edition of the EA scales (Biringen, 2008) is still relatively new and studies using this edition are only just starting to be published (e.g., Flykt et al, 2012).…”