Childrearing practices and social support among mothers living in the capital and countryside of Santa Catarina

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between mother’s childrearing practices and their social support in the capital versus the countryside of Santa Catarina. In each cultural environment, fifty mothers participated in the study and were interviewed with two scales that evaluated their childrearing practices using two factors: primary care and stimulation. One scale evaluated the frequency of mother’s childrearing practices and the other evaluated the degree of importance the mothers attributed to those practices. The mother’s social support network was analyzed using a third scale. The results demonstrated that: (a) there was are significant differences in mother’s reported childrearing practices and their social network between the cultural environments studied, suggesting that mothers from the countryside give more importance to primary care and have more extensive social support systems; and (b) even though there are some relationships between mother’s childrearing practices and their social support, these relationships cannot be explained indiscriminately, once other variables, possibly related to mother’s environment, interfere with their beliefs and practices regarding childcare. Keywords: childrearing practices; social network; cultural environment.