Educational Styles and Types of Development Between Birth and Two Years of Age

• In Event: Explaining Family Effects on Early Child Development: Results Based on European Birth Cohort Studies

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the social variations in parents' child-rearing practices during the first two years of a child's life and the role played by these different types of practices on the child's early development. Indeed, the links between certain practices, such as album reading, and language development have been well documented (Lemke, 2000, 2001; Rodriguez & al., 2009; Piasta & Wagner, 2010; Sénéchal, 2011; Rowe, 2012; Dickinson & al., 2012; Cartmill & al., 2013; Wollscheid, 2014; Logan & al, 2019). However, one might wonder about the place taken, for example, by the use of nursery rhymes or the ways of regulating behaviour in families from different social backgrounds, as well as the links between these practices and developmental processes (Britto & al, 2002; Rodriguez et al, 2009; Schaub, 2015). From a sociological point of view, it is a question of putting the different types of practices back into a space of educational styles associated with the diversity of living conditions, resources and parents’ trajectories (Lareau, 2003 ; Geay & Humeau, 2016). From a psychological point of view, the aim is to contribute to an analysis of the processes of differentiation, taking into account the different dimensions of development (motor, language, social) and the interactions between them.
This study 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 concerns 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 » (CDI) whose scales concern the psychomotor development, the socialization and the language, and the « Mac Arthur-Bates » inventories (MA), which allow to measure the lexical reception and production.
The analysis will show the role played in particular by developmental toys, construction games, songs or dolls. Above all, it will question approaches that focus solely on the most "cost-effective" practices for cognitive and language development, highlighting the diversity of educational conceptions and folk theories of child development.

Authors

• Bertrand Geay, Institut National des Etudes Démographiques

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

• Emilie Spruyt, University of Picardie