Research Report: Social Proximity in Early Mother± Infant Interactions: Implications for Gender Differences? Lisbeth B. Lindahl* and Mikael Heimann Department of Psychology, GoÈteborg University. Sweden In an exploratory study, we investigated degrees of social proximity between mothers and their 9-month-old children. Twenty-four Swedish mother±infant dyads (12 boys and 12 girls) were observed during a brief free play episode. Social proximity was measured through nine items focusing on both communication and social interaction. Overall, we found that mother±daughter dyads displayed significantly higher degrees of social proximity than mother±son dyads. More specifically, mothers with daughters displayed more physical and visual contact, and were also rated as more sensitive than mothers with sons. It was also found that girls were judged as being more compliant than boys. '1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Early Dev. Parent. 6: 83±88 (1997) No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 2. No. of References: 24. Key words: Mother±infant interactions; social proximity; gender differences It is widely believed in popular psychology that there are gender differences in the early socio- emotional development of boys and girls. It is assumed that girls are encouraged to develop a relatedness to others, while boys are encouraged to be more independent (Miller, 1988). Although it has never been tested empirically, this common belief has also been adopted by many researchers who have taken it for granted in discussions of the early development of boys and girls (see Raver, 1996; Robinson et al., 1993). Development of `relatedness to others' is assumed to be connected with a closer relation- ship between the child and the caretaker (Aries and Olver, 1985). There are, indeed, results of many previous studies pointing out that girls stay closer to their mothers (Gunnar and Donahue, 1980; Lewis et al., 1992), are encour- aged to develop dependency (Lytton and Romney, 1991), are better at interpreting non- verbal cues, and so one (see, for example, Aries and Olver, 1985, Block, 1983; Golombok and Fivush, 1994; Haviland and Malatesta, 1981). Such a consistent finding, which is not fully explained, clearly merits further investigation. One possible explanation for the existence of early differences in the social behaviour of boys and girls is that the infants, by themselves, promote different interactions. This might be due CCC 1057-3593/97/020083±06$17.50 Received 26 January 1996 '1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Revised 10 April 1997 Accepted 9 July 1997 Early Development and Parenting, Vol. 6 (2), 83±88 (1997) *Correspondence to: Lisbeth B. Lindahl, Department of Psychology, Haraldsgatan 1, S-413 14 Go È teborg, Sweden. E- mail: Lisbeth.Lindahl@psy.gu.se Contact grant sponsor: Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation Contact grant number: 89/313 Contact grant sponsor: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm