Diferencias en sensibilidad parental entre madres y padres de Chile y USA

Abstract

There have been reported some gender differences in diverse parenthood aspects, but still there is no consensus among the authors regarding of sensitivity's expression. Sensitivity is the ability to attend, read and respond appropriately to the child needs. As a dyadic ability, it is influenced by contextual and individual factors of the adult and child involved, and the adult's gender and nationality could be one of those. The goal was to compare father's and mother's sensitivity expression with their children of one year old, in Chile and in US. 38 dyads (19 Chileans and 19 Americans), were assessed with the Adult Sensitivity Scale. Descriptive and comparative analyses were made for gender and nationality variables. There were no significant differences by gender when comparing the whole sample, but when separated analysis where made by country, Chile showed greater differences than US, where fathers have significantly higher scores than mothers in Chile, while US mothers show a trend. The US sample showed higher sensitivity than the Chilean sample, and mothers showed greater differences than the fathers.