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.