The investigator proposes to study populations of African American mothers and children in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. She will attempt to reach a variety of mother- child dyads that vary in socioeconomic status, age and education. Mothers who are identified for the study will be contacted by the researcher first by letter and then by a follow up phone call in which the study will be explained in more detail and appointments will be made to further explain the experimental procedures. Mother and child interaction will be studied by using videotapes to record different responses such as body contact, affection, vocalization, positioning etc... Videotapes to maximize the accuracy of observations. Tapes will be observed by trained judges who will be blind to the hypotheses and other data collected on the subjects. The investigator proposes to use a sample of 100 mothers with infants. She will use multiple regression analysis using the attachment status of the 16 month old infant as the criterion, and the other variables as predictors. The effect of age, education and socioeconomic status will be determined by analysis of co-variance.
