IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v154y2016icp62-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When can parents most influence their child's development? Expert knowledge and perceived local realities

Author

Listed:
  • Worthman, Carol M.
  • Tomlinson, Mark
  • Rotheram-Borus, Mary Jane

Abstract

Compelling evidence for the long-term impact of conditions in gestation and early childhood on both physical and psychosocial functioning and productivity has stimulated a focus in global health policy and social services on the “first 1000 days”. Consequently, related initiatives may assume that rationale for this orientation and the agency of parents during this period is self-evident and widely shared among parents and communities. In 2012, we tested this assumption among a sample of 38 township-dwelling caregivers in Cape Town, by asking a question identified during a study of cultural models of parenting, namely: At what age or stage can a parent or caregiver have the most influence on a child's development? Formal cultural consensus analysis of responses met criteria for strong agreement that the period for greatest impact of parenting on a child's development occurs at adolescence, at a median age of 12 years. In follow-up focus groups and structured interviews, caregivers articulated clear ecological and developmental reasons for this view, related to protection both of developmental potential and against powerful, context-specific ecological risks (early pregnancy, substance ab/use, violence and gangs) that emerge during adolescence. Such risks threaten educational attainment, reproductive health, and social derailment with enduring consequences for lifetime well-being that caregivers are highly motivated to prevent. Developmental needs in pregnancy and early childhood, by contrast, were considered more manageable. These findings resonate with emerging evidence for multiple sensitive periods with corresponding developmental needs, and urge the value of complementing efforts to optimize early development with those to sustain and enhance it during later windows of developmental opportunity such as adolescence. Our results also indicate the need to consult local views of developmental risk and parenting practice in communicating with caregivers and planning interventions, and the value of using available methodological tools to do so.

Suggested Citation

  • Worthman, Carol M. & Tomlinson, Mark & Rotheram-Borus, Mary Jane, 2016. "When can parents most influence their child's development? Expert knowledge and perceived local realities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 62-69.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:154:y:2016:i:c:p:62-69
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.02.040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953616300958
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.02.040?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Theall, Katherine P. & Brett, Zoë H. & Shirtcliff, Elizabeth A. & Dunn, Erin C. & Drury, Stacy S., 2013. "Neighborhood disorder and telomeres: Connecting children's exposure to community level stress and cellular response," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 50-58.
    2. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(4), pages 855-902, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rotheram-Borus, Mary Jane & Tomlinson, Mark & Worthman, Carol M. & Norwood, Peter & le Roux, Ingrid & O'Connor, Mary J., 2023. "Maternal depression, alcohol use, and transient effects of perinatal paraprofessional home visiting in South Africa: Eight-year follow-up of a cluster randomized controlled trial," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).
    2. Marina Sayuri Yakuwa & Letícia Pancieri & Sarah Neill & Débora Falleiros de Mello, 2022. "Mothers’ Understanding of Brain Development in Early Childhood: A Qualitative Study in Brazil," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.
    3. Christie, Hope & Hamilton-Giachritsis, Catherine & Alves-Costa, Filipa & Tomlinson, Mark & Stewart, Jackie & Skeen, Sarah & Notholi, Vuyolwethu & Gqwaka, Phumza & Sambudla, Akhona & Halligan, Sarah, 2020. "Associations between parental trauma, mental health, and parenting: A qualitative study in a high-adversity South African community," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    4. Panter-Brick, Catherine & Eggerman, Mark, 2018. "The field of medical anthropology in Social Science & Medicine," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 233-239.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2014. "Family, Community and Long-Term Earnings Inequality," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def017, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    2. Paul R. Flora, 2021. "Regional Spotlight: Poverty in Philadelphia, and Beyond," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 6(4), pages 16-22, December.
    3. Deepak Saraswat, 2022. "Labor Market Impacts of Exposure to Affordable Housing Supply: Evidence from the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program," Working papers 2022-09, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    4. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2020. "Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 223-248, February.
    5. Gordon B. Dahl & Anne C. Gielen, 2021. "Intergenerational Spillovers in Disability Insurance," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 116-150, April.
    6. Patricio S Dalton & Victor H Gonzalez Jimenez & Charles N Noussair, 2017. "Exposure to Poverty and Productivity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, January.
    7. Francesco Andreoli & Eugenio Peluso, 2016. "So close yet so unequal: Reconsidering spatial inequality in U.S. cities," Working Papers 21/2016, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    8. Stephen B. Billings & Mark Hoekstra, 2019. "Schools, Neighborhoods, and the Long-Run Effect of Crime-Prone Peers," NBER Working Papers 25730, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Martti Kaila & Emily Nix & Krista Riukula, 2021. "Disparate Impacts of Job Loss by Parental Income and Implications for Intergenerational Mobility," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 53, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Bratu, Cristina & Bolotnyy, Valentin, 2023. "Immigrant intergenerational mobility: A focus on childhood environment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    11. Hill, Terrence D. & Ellison, Christopher G. & Burdette, Amy M. & Taylor, John & Friedman, Katherine L., 2016. "Dimensions of religious involvement and leukocyte telomere length," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 168-175.
    12. Fabian Kosse & Thomas Deckers & Pia Pinger & Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch & Armin Falk, 2020. "The Formation of Prosociality: Causal Evidence on the Role of Social Environment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(2), pages 434-467.
    13. Lin, Dajun & Lutter, Randall & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2018. "Cognitive performance and labour market outcomes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 121-135.
    14. Michael Geruso & Timothy J. Layton & Jacob Wallace, 2023. "What Difference Does a Health Plan Make? Evidence from Random Plan Assignment in Medicaid," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 341-379, July.
    15. Erich Battistin & Lorenzo Neri, 2017. "School Performance, Score Inflation and Economic Geography," Working Papers 837, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    16. Alex Bell & Raj Chetty & Xavier Jaravel & Neviana Petkova & John Van Reenen, 2019. "Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 647-713.
    17. Barbara Broadway & Anna Zhu, 2023. "Spatial heterogeneity in welfare reform success," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2023n13, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    18. Peter Leopold S. Bergman & Eric W. Chan & Adam Kapor, 2020. "Housing Search Frictions: Evidence from Detailed Search Data and a Field Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 8080, CESifo.
    19. Francesco Agostinelli & Matthias Doepke & Giuseppe Sorrenti & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2020. "It Takes a Village: The Economics of Parenting with Neighborhood and Peer Effects," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2228, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Chong Lu, 2022. "The effect of migration on rural residents’ intergenerational subjective social status mobility in China," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3279-3308, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:154:y:2016:i:c:p:62-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.