The effect of infant gender on language used by adolescent mothers

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine language used by mothers interacting with their infants (under a year of age) to determine if mothers of males tended to talk differently to their infants than mothers of females. Four adolescent mothers (mean age 16) and four young mothers (mean age 21) were each videotaped for fifteen minutes while interacting with their infants. The following measures were used to evaluate the language used by mothers: mean length of response, type-token ratio, and an utterance classification system based on The Maternal Language Classification Scale developed by Mahoney and Peterson (1980). The results of this study suggest:

1. Mothers of males do tend to talk differently than mothers of females. Mothers of males tend to differ from mothers of females in the use of certain types of utterances and in the diversity of their vocabulary.

2. Adolescent mothers tend to be less verbal during interactions with their infants than young mothers.

3. Certain types of utterances (verbal play and utterances which seek the child's attention) tend to be influenced when an observer is present in the room.