What is the role of families in child development?
The Child and Family Blog reports on the latest research on how families influence child development. This overview highlights some of the key themes in this field of knowledge.
The blog overview looks at parenting as a team around children (“coparenting”) and how it operates in the infinite variety of families across the world. It looks not just at parents’ and carers’ relationship with children, but at their relationships with each other (the “community of care”). It looks at how children can benefit from multiple and different experiences of parental care. It considers the historical origins of the term, “primary carer”.
Key influences on how parents care for children are considered – separation and divorce, poverty and stress.
The overview concludes with a spotlight on attachment.
Perhaps most crucially, within the environment in which children are raised, families play a central role in their development
In Partnership with ISSBD
The International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD) and the Child & Family Blog (CFB) have launched a new collaborative project to teach early career scholars across the world, particularly in the Global South, how they can best communicate child development science to parents and carers in their own communities.
Child development is a science that cares. It illuminates not only how parents and carers matter and play a critical role in the development of their children but also how parents and carers can best support children as they grow up in an increasingly troubled and dangerous world.
Too much valuable knowledge about child development for parents and caregivers remains hidden within the academy, especially in the majority world, which includes the Global South. Yet researchers, especially those new to the field, are eager to learn how to bring developmental science out to the world.
We wish to share what we call edible science, scientific information that is accessible, digestible, and usable to the general public. This project will teach younger researchers across the world how they can communicate the science to parents and caregivers in their own communities. Early career researchers are excited to learn how to turn research findings into accessible science that will reach the general public.
As part of this collaboration, the two organisations will host a series of webinars designed for early career scholars. These sessions will explore science communication techniques, featuring global researchers and science communicators who share successful strategies for engaging local communities.
For additional information about ISSBD-CFB collaboration or the upcoming webinar series, whether you are a researcher or a science communicator, please contact Child & Family Blog Operational Manager Duncan Fisher or ISSBD’s President, Tina Malti.