Maternal sensitivity in interactions with their 2-month-old infants in Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

This paper reports on a study of maternal sensitivity in 22 primiparous women and their infants from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A semi-structured interview was conducted about sociodemographic risk, as and videotaped home observations to assess maternal sensitivity, and its relation with warmth, verbal and physical engagement, and camera awareness. A K-means cluster analysis was performed to examine patterns of risk in relation to maternal sensitivity. Compared to the 15 mothers with higher sensitivity scores, the seven 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 pattern 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.