An attempt to assess the structure of the studied families, patterns of their functioning, home and environment provision of toys stimulating children’s development, as well as verification of possible relationships between these variables was undertaken in this study. In order to give suggestion of typology of families there was an analysis of clusters. The study involved 126 families with children aged from 3 to 18 months. Following instruments were used: AHEMD for children aged 3-18 months and HOME for children aged 0-36 months “Interview and observation”. On the basis of the cluster analysis five types of families were distinguished – “Families with training parents”, “Families with caring parents”, “Families with parents overcoming difficulties”, “Families with elitist parents” and “Families with not-involved parents”.

The aim of this study was to determine the functioning of mothers in terms of communication and styles of education, including family structure, gender and age of the adolescent. Hypotheses were based on the assumption that if a mother is the most important person in the family, then there will be no differences between single mother and the mother from complete family in the assessment of communication and styles of education in adolescents’s opinion. It was assumed that the assessment of the quality of the relationship will be affected by gender and age of adolescents. There were studied 148 adolescents with complete families and 237 who raised by single mothers, using a Parent Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS) and a Survey of Upbringing Style. Analysis of variance revealed that communication with the mother is satisfying, regardless of family structure, which strongly differentiate the democratic parenting style, and gender-style liberal. There were seen a significant interaction between gender and age of adolescent, conditioning the open communication and interaction with the mother adolescent age and family structure substantially influences on the liberal loving style.