乳幼児用身体接触尺度の作成

The importance of physical contact in child care has been the focus of much attention. The purpose of this study was to create a questionnaire scale focusing on the content aspect of maternal touch. In Study I, parent-child physical contact was observed for 10 minutes in a playground setting. As a result, 74 maternal touch contents were obtained. In Study II, a survey was conducted with mothers of children aged 0 and 1 year. A total of 249 mothers responded to the survey; 159 mothers’ responses were analyzed. The survey included maternal touch, infant behavior, maternal parenting stress, and maternal depression. The results showed that the maternal touch scale was classified into eight categories: firm touch, holding, vestibular stimulation, holding hands, holding on the lap, light active touch, clerical touch, and passive touch. The maternal touch scale was positively correlated with infant behavior, but was not correlated with the other scales. The lack of association between the maternal touch scale and parenting stress and depression may be due to the relatively high mental health of the mothers who participated in this study. Therefore, further study is needed regarding the validity of the maternal touch scale.