MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND INFANT PSYCHOMOTOR DEVELOPMENT: A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP

Abstract

The absence of the father in poverty contexts has been related to difficulties in the exercise of parenting, affecting negatively infant mental health. Because of the recent social changes, with respect to the participation of women in work and the growth in the number of women who are managing their homes alone, there has been an increasing interest in comprehending the situation of boys and girls who are entering nurseries and playgrounds in a younger age. This article studies the relationship between the infant psychomotor development, the mother's working day, and the family configuration, in a sample of 199 children between ages 8 to 24 months, in a low socioeconomic level who attend nurseries in Santiago, Chile. The psychomotor development of the infants was evaluated with the Scale of psychomotor development 0-24 months (EEDP) of Rodríguez, Arancibia, and Undurraga (1976). The information regarding the family configuration and the working day was extracted from the interview with the parents made by the person responsible for the institution. The results show that children who attend nurseries and whose mothers work a complete working day and who come from a single-parent family, score meaningfully lower in psychomotor development than the children whose mothers have a complete working day, but come from a bi-parental family.