Mother and Infant Activity and Interaction in France and in the United States: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Infants experiences are often thought to influence social and intellectual development in the individual, and on a societal level they are sometimes credited for some of the distinctiveness that typifies cultural style. To compare and contrast the experiences of French and U.S. American infants, mother-infant dyads in Paris and in New York City were observed interacting in the natural setting of their homes. This report focuses on infants' visual attention, tactual exploration, and vocalisation and on mothers' mediated and unmediated stimulation and speech to infants. The study had two main goals: One was to identify and describe activities and interaction patterns that may be similar and different in these two Western cultures, and the other was to test the cross-cultural validity of a hypothesis that states that specific mother and infant activities relate to one another in dyadic interaction. Mothers and infants in the two cultures showed some similarities and some different emphases in their activities, and patterns of mother-infant interaction in the two cultures tended to correspond.

Infant attention scaffolding at home

“…Mothers were free to organise the activity of the dyad as they wished, and were specifically asked not to interact with the female observer. A session lasted a minimum of 45 minutes; if the session exceeded 60 minutes, it was ended at a moment when the dyad changed activity (similar to Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Pecheux, & Rahn, 1991).…”

“…First, Bomstein et al (1991) found that US mothers tend to maintain attention rather than introduce it; however , they considered onl y 3 minut es of a I hour observation. Our results indicate that a short sample is not necessaril y representative of a whole hour.…”

French parents’ cultural models and childrearing beliefs

“…In a study of French and German parents' educational objectives for their preschool age children, Prê teur and Louvet-Schmauss (1991) found that the French parents cited ''awakening individual personality development'' and ''awakening new and varied interests'' more frequently than they did developing any speci c cognitive domain or skill. Yet, in an observational study comparing mother-infant dyads from Paris and New York, Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Pê cheux, and Rahn (1991) found that the French mothers stimulated their infants, by encouraging them to attend to and explore their environment, less than did the American mothers. If French parents do value the idea of stimulating or awakening children, it is possible that they believe in doing so through practices not reserved to the cognitive domain, as is suggested by an ethnographic study of Parisian bourgeois families conducted in the 1980s (Sjö gren-De Beauchaine, 1988).…”

Ideas about Parenting in Argentina, France, and the United States

“…Observational studies comparing mothers' behavioural interactions with their children have shown that US mothers tend to engage their infants in social interactions more than French mothers (Bornstein, 1994;Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Pêcheux, & Rahn, 1991). In accordance with observed behaviour, US mothers rated themselves as more sensitive and affectionate than French and Argentine mothers rated themselves.…”