EARLY-CHILDHOOD DIFFERENTIALS IN MOTHER-CHILD AIDS-INFORMATION INTERACTION

To date there have been no systematic, inquiries into 1) the extent of parent-child AIDS interaction; or 2) the factors that influence wheth er young children and their parents talk about AIDS. In our sample, fr om a medium-sized Southern metropolitan area, 70 percent of mothers of children in the first, third, and fifth grades said they had talked t o their child about AIDS, but only 41 percent of the mothers said thei r child had asked them questions about AIDS. Fourteen hypotheses about factors which might influence mother-child AIDS interaction are deriv ed from the health/sex socialization literature, In the process of tes ting these bivariate hypotheses it is shown that, although sons and da ughters are equally likely to ask their mother questions about AIDS, m others are more likely to talk to their daughters than their sons abou t AIDS. This pattern maintains even after controls are introduced. It is suggested that discussing AIDS with young children as a health issu e rather than waiting until adolescence and discussing it as a sex iss ue may be a more effective socialization route. Mothers may be able to do this with young daughters in the context of women's health, but be cause most AIDS education for adults generally is sex- rather than hea lth-oriented they may lack the knowledge and framework to do this with their sons.