Maternal sensitivity in mother-infant interactions in Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study of maternal sensitivity in 22 primiparous women and their infants from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted, as well as videotaped naturalistic home observations of the dyads. A K-means cluster analysis was performed to examine patterns of risk in relation to maternal sensitivity. The results reveal that compared to the 15 mothers with higher sensitivity scores, the 7 mothers with lower sensitivity scores were characterized by lower educational levels, lower income, lower age, living in a slum, unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, and later onset of prenatal care. Whether father was resident did not appear to distinguish between the lower and higher sensitivity groups. The article concludes that the patterns of social-contextual risk for Brazilian mothers showing less sensitive caregiving to their infants provide a clear direction for future research in this cultural context.

KEYWORDS:

• Maternal sensitivity
• Brazil
• socioeconomic risk
• unplanned pregnancy

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.