Mothering Young Children: Child Care, Stress and Social Life

This study focuses on mothers' and young children's everyday social experience by analyzing their social relationships, social support in child care, mother-child interaction, and mothers' evaluations of all these aspects. Three hundred and eighty-four mothers with a child aged between 1 and 3 years, living in a town in Central Italy, were interviewed. A Principal Component Analysis was performed on items concerning mothers' and children's social experience and mothers' evaluations. Four PCA generated factors were regressed on the mother's and child's characteristics. Results show that, even in a context characterized by social conditions supportive to mothering, there is a comparatively widespread desire for social interaction with other mothers and children. A stress related to intensive mothering was found in a minority of the mothers and was predicted by the mothers' continuous commitment in child care during the whole day. Results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that social contacts with other mothers may have a mitigating effect on mothers' stress. One implication is that early educational services that provide the opportunity for social intercourse among parents can be an important resource for them.