Effect of Early Social Disparities on Developmental Trajectories From Birth to Two Years of Age

• In Event: Effects of Social Disparities on Early Child Development: Results Based on European Birth Cohort Studies

Abstract

The aim of this communication is to identify differentiated profiles of development between birth and two years of age, based on the social characteristics of children. Following on from the work on parental scaffolding and pre-verbal communication, many recent studies have shown the role played by the family's cultural environment and parental educational practices on the child's language development (Bruner, 2000; Lemke, 2000, 2001; Pahl, 2008; Rodriguez & al., 2009; Piasta & Wagner, 2010; Sénéchal, 2011; Row, 2012; Dickinson & al., 2012; Cartmill & al., 2013; Wollscheid, 2014). Other research has focused on the role played by sensorimotor stimuli in motor development in the first few months of life (Bril & Parrat-Dayan, 2008; Venetsanou et al., 2010; Castro Magalhães et al., 2015). It seems useful to study these different aspects of development together. In addition, to better understand developmental dynamics and its links with social factors, it is possible to question the lasting nature of the differentiations observed at a given time, and in particular the relationships that exist between the differentiations observed at one year and those observed at two years. This will be based on data from the French Longitudinal Study of Children (ELFE: https://www.elfe-france.fr/en/), which has monitored more than 18,000 children since birth in 2011, as well as the qualitative cohort Generation 2011, which includes 50 families from different social backgrounds. These studies collected plenty of information on parents' living conditions, cultural backgrounds, lifestyles, family structures, toys made available to the child and activities shared between parents and children. These elements can be cross-referenced with the developmental measures used in both cohorts: the « Child Development Inventory » whose scales concern the psychomotor development, the socialization and the language, and the « Mac Arthur-Bates » inventories, which allow to measure the lexical reception and production.

Two types of results will be highlighted. On the one hand, we will show the importance of the gaps in motor development in the first year and in language in the second year. On the other hand, we will compare the measures of language development obtained at one year and two years. The gaps observed will be analyzed according to the cultural resources of the families, the migratory trajectories of some of them and the moral and educational dispositions of both parents. Based on the qualitative study, we will also hypothesize that some parts of the questionnaires used are particularly sensitive to parents' perceptions of development and that parents' responses can then be interpreted as indicators of their attention to development more than as objective measures. Beyond the methodological lessons of this analysis, we will discuss the overall logic of social differentiation in development during the first two years.

Authors

• Bertrand Geay, Institut National des Etudes Démographiques

• Pierig Humeau, Groupe de Recherches et d’Etudes, France

• Emilie Spruyt, University of Picardie