Socio-emotional development of rural infants was studied on a sample of 192 infants drawn equally from threeage cohorts; 6-12 months, 13-18 months, 19-24 months. The sample was drawn from three districts of North Karnatakawhere in from each district two taluks were randomly selected and from each selected taluk, two villages were randomlyselected. Socio-emotional development was measured by using Social/Emotional sub-scale of Bayley Scale of Infant andToddler Development (BSID-III, 2006). One-way ANOVA was used for testing differences in socio-emotional developmentindices by gender and age cohorts and t-test was applied to test the differences between infants of the three districts. Theresults revealed that majority (65%) of the infants had average socio-emotional development indices while 26 per cent ofthem had high level and nine per cent of them had low level of socio-emotional development. There was significantdifference between gender on socio-emotional development indices where in female infants were significantly higher thanthe male infants. However, there was no significant difference between the age cohorts as well as between the infants of thethree districts on socio-emotional development. As the majority of the infants had average/low socio-emotional development,there is a need for parent education program in order to enhance the socio-emotional development of infants in order toattain high socio-emotional development among infants.