“The baby relies on the sound of my voice.” Maternal perceptions of musical singing interactions between mother and child

Abstract

The musical interaction between mother and child, present in all civilizations and consisting of expression and communication through the different manifestations of the mother’s voice has been focused on in various previous studies. This article continues this line of research by documenting the perspectives of nine mothers (in the province of Barcelona, Spain), and their babies up until the age of 18 months, regarding their musical interaction, specifically the singing and types of intervention through the mother’s voice. This qualitative study utilizes a semi-structured interview with open-ended questions for data collection. In the process of transcription and analysis, open and manual coding was used to define specific categories: pregnancy, repertoire, origin, frequently used activities actions, and affective experiences. These categories reflect the most important characteristics of the musical interactions described by the mothers in their narratives. The results indicate that the participating mothers used communicative mechanisms of musical expression that went beyond the act of singing, thus showing the baby that it was being cared for, protected, and loved through the cognitive, affective, and physical domains.