Despite a significant body of work that documents the importance of mother-child relationships, the studies on programmes that support these relationships are few, particularly with respect to subclinical populations. In this report, we coded the responses of 114 mothers of infants and toddlers to open-ended questions in order to identify the nature and frequency of the concerns that prompted them to participate in mother-child groups. The responses were coded by two independent raters who achieved a strong inter-rater reliability on the 21-item coding system that was developed. Mothers who reported concerns about their confidence/ambivalence about being a mother and those who indicated a desire for support and guidance from others were significantly more likely to continue to seek ongoing assistance with parenting and enrol for more semesters than mothers who did not express such concerns at intake. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 2 notes.)