Men and women in childcare: a study of caregiver–child interactions

Figures & data

Table 1. Description of observed caregiver behavior.

Caregiver behavior	Description
Attention Sensitivity  Responsiveness	Caregiver gazes at child or clearly interacts with child Caregiver responds adequately to a child, e.g., reacts to questions, confirms what a child is doing or saying
Comforting	Caregiver comforts a child, responds to emotions of child
Praising	Caregiver gives positive feedback, such as compliments, applause or thumbs-up
Touching-affective	Caregiver touches child in an affective way, e.g., cuddling, patting
Non-sensitivity Non-responsiveness	Caregiver does not react to the clear signals of a child, such as a child calling the caregiver’s name or a child asking the caregiver a question
Ignoring Intrusiveness	Caregiver does not respond to two or more consecutive clear signals of a child, such as child calling caregivers name or asking a question Caregiver discourages child through telling them that they cannot fulfill trhe task, e.g., ‘this game is too difficult’, or intrusive helping
Critique	Caregiver gives negative feedback, such as saying ‘you did it wrong’ or explicit sighing
Touching-aversive	Caregiver touches child in aversive way, such as hitting or pulling
Stimulation Encouraging	Caregiver supports child to fulfil action independently, e.g., saying ‘you can do it’, ‘try again’
Stimulating Informing	Caregiver stimulates child to explore game (e.g., setting a higher aim, suggest playing game in a different way, challenge children to perform a difficult action) or to think by prompting or asking activating questions (‘think again’, ‘is it really a shoe?’) Caregiver provides children general knowledge (e.g., ‘a mole lives underground’) or corrects what a child says or informs children about the rule of the game or demonstrates game.
Giving space Setting limits	Caregiver provides space for child initiatives, e.g., accepts idea of child, lets child choose how to play the game Caregiver sets limits for a child or restricts a child, e.g., saying ‘don’t do that’ or ‘wait’, give reprimands.

Table 2. Means and standard deviations and effect sizes for observed number of caregiver behaviors toward boys and girls during each observation.

Caregiver behavior	Boys		Girls		Cohen’s d (boys-girls)
	M	(SD)	M	(SD)
Attention
Male caregivers (n = 19)	191.00	(45.98)	170.27	(47.62)	0.44
Female caregivers (n = 18)	204.38	(36.93)	176.76	(53.35)	0.62
Total (n = 37)	197.51	(41.80)	173.43	(49.28)	0.53
Cohen’s d (male-female)	−0.32		−0.13
Sensitivity
Male caregivers (n = 19)	30.21	(9.89)	26.37	(12.83)	0.34
Female caregivers (n = 18)	30.72	(8.51)	26.50	(10.16)	0.45
Total (n = 37)	30.46	(9.12)	26.43	(11.45)	0.39
Cohen’s d (male-female)	−0.06		−0.01
Non-sensitivity
Male caregivers (n = 19)	1.32	(1.06)	0.84	(1.39)	0.39
Female caregivers (n = 18)	1.39	(1.82)	0.89	(1.23)	0.32
Total (n = 37)	1.35	(1.46)	0.86	(1.29)	0.36
Cohen’s d (male-female)	−0.05		−0.04
Stimulating
Male caregivers (n = 19)	13.74	(6.56)	12.84	(7.34)	0.13
Female caregivers (n = 18)	16.22	(5.64)	12.39	(7.17)	0.55
Total (n = 37)	14.95	(6.18)	12.62	(7.16)	0.35
Cohen’s d (male-female)	−0.41		0.06

Table 3. Regression coefficients and statistics for caregivers’ attention, sensitivity, non-sensitivity and stimulation toward boys and girls.

		Regression coefficients		95% CI of B		Test statistics
Reference situation	Situation	B	SE	Lower	Upper	Wald χ^2 (1)	p
Attention	Caregiver	13.38	11.60	−9.35	36.11	1.33	.25
	Child	−20.73	15.61	−51.32	9.87	1.76	.18
	Caregiver*child	−6.89	16.51	−39.25	25.47	0.17	.68
Sensitivity	Caregiver	0.84	2.64	−4.33	6.01	0.10	.75
	Child	−3.84	2.82	−9.36	1.68	1.86	.17
	Caregiver*child	−0.38	2.75	−5.76	5.00	0.02	.89
Non-sensitivity	Caregiver	0.07	0.39	−0.70	0.84	0.04	.85
	Child	−0.45	0.35	−1.13	0.24	1.63	.20
	Caregiver*child	0.00	0.42	−0.82	0.83	0.00	.99
Stimulation	Caregiver	2.56	2.23	−1.62	6.73	1.44	.23
	Child	−0.90	1.80	−4.43	2.64	0.25	.62
	Caregiver*child	−2.94	2.70	−8.22	2.34	1.19	.28

Table 4. Spearman’s correlations for observed caregiver behavior and caregiver’s sex role.

	Sex role
	Male caregivers		Female caregivers
Caregiver behavior	Boys	Girls	Boys	Girls
Attention	−.05	−.00	−.04	.25
Sensitivity	−.04	−.15	.19	.51
Non-sensitivity	−.23	.39	−.15	−.06
Stimulation	.14	.26	.36	.67*

*p < .05 (2-tailed).