Studies indicate that the presence of physical chronic disease in childhood may constitute an important factor to the quality of mother-child interaction. However, few studies investigate the childrearing practices in children with physical chronic disease. The daily care demand by the disease treatment as well as the child physical and emotional fragility may affect the childrearing practices. Fourty mothers participated in this study, half of them with a child with physical chronic disease and the other with a child without this condition. The children were of both sexes, 3 to 4 years old. The participants were selected in public hospitals and schools. A semi-structured interview was used to investigate the mother's childrearing practices, examined by content analysis. The results show a marginally significant difference showing that the group of mothers of the chronic disease children uses coercive practices less frequently. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the groups in relation to the use of physical punishment and privation/penalty, suggesting that mothers of chronic disease children use less frequently this type of practice. The results support the initial hypothesis that mothers of chronic disease children would be less coercive when compared to mothers of the other group.
childrearing practices; physical chronic disease; childhood
