Characteristics Of Rural Mothers On Infant Care Behavior Research

Family plays a very important role in child socialization in early childhood. As an important caregiver, mother can't be taken the place in the development of infant intelligence, personality and social behavior. Chinese rural population is tremendous, so rural education is most important in Chinese education system. But the situation of rural family education is worrying all along , few studies have been conducted in maternal caregiving behavior, especially in rural samples, we can provide feasible advice for rural mother about family education by our study. In the present study, 40 infant subjects who were 10-24 months olds and their mothers were observed during free play in the home , and comparison to urban middle class mother at the same time. We also gain data by using Maternal Behaviour Q-sort Manual Version 3.1, Carey Children Temperament Evaluation Questionnaire, Locke-Wallace Marriage Adjustment Questionnaire. The results show:(1) In the course of caregiving , caregiving behaviors of rural mother correlate to infants' behaviors on the language, action and emotion, caregiving quality of rural mother is low.(2) The age, SES, and marriage adjustment of rural mother are irrelated to maternal caregiving behavior, but the more are the education and caregiving time of rural mother, the higher is maternal sensitivity .(3) In the course of caregiving, rural mother caregiving is irrelated to maternal caregiving behaviors.(4) Positive caregiving of rural mother is fewer than that of urban mother, but rural mother sensitivity is higher than urban mother sensitivity, and the differences of caregiving behaviors between rural and urban mothers are correlative to the behavior difference between rural and urban infants.