Cultural, Socioeconomic, and Gender Differences

Within North American culture, race, education, and socioeconomic class each influence maternal behaviors toward a child. For example, although inner-city, working-class African American mothers reportedly engage in vocal behavior at about the same rate as middle-class African American mothers, data reveal other more subtle differences (Hammer & Weiss, 1999). Middle-class mothers incorporate language goals more frequently in their play with their infants. In response, middle-class African American infants initiate verbal play more frequently and produce twice as many vocalizations as working-class infants.

While middle-class North American mothers ask more questions, seemingly to stimulate language growth, mothers from lower socioeconomic classes use more imperatives or directives. Similarly, better educated mothers are more verbal. Siblings and peers are more important in the infant socialization process within the homes of minority and lower socioeconomic class families, possibly accounting for the decreased talking by the mother.

Within some groups, children may be expected to learn language through observation, not interaction (Westby, 1986). In one Piedmont, South Carolina, African American community, infants are not viewed as capable of intentional behavior, so their vocalizations are often ignored.

Cultural and socioeconomic differences are not maladaptive. Quite the contrary, they reflect the values and beliefs of an ethnic or other recognizable group. It is not known which aspects of maternal adaptation are most important for a child's communication development. It would be inappropriate, therefore, to suggest that one culture's maternal practices are better than another.

Differences also reflect the gender of the infant. In general, mothers tend to maintain closer proximity to their daughters than to their sons, at least until the age of 4 years. This gender difference is reflected in other ways. At 2 years of age, female infants receive more questions, male infants more directives. With female infants, mothers are more repetitive, acknowledge more child answers, and take more turns. In short, more maternal utterances of a longer length are addressed to daughters than to sons. This difference is not related to the child's linguistic behavior, there being very few if any gender differences in children's language performance at this age.