children whose mothers begin or return to work in the first year after childbirth thus present internalized problems. Non-maternal care and maternal employment are certainly not identical but are assumed to be related.
Alternatively, the effect of early maternal employment on a young child’s cognitive functioning may vary according to subgroup-specific characteristics, such as family income. Put another way, poverty could have a pre-weighted effect on the development of cognitive abilities. For example, there are many hypotheses that affluent parents talk much more with their children and use a wider vocabulary. Thus, for economically disadvantaged families, having mothers with their children may result in a weaker impact on cognition if children are still not receiving the stimulation (e.g. expressive and receptive language skills) that predicts later cognitive outcomes, even with their mothers.
According to the economic view of child development, the main idea was therefore that mothers’ entry into the labor market would increase family economic resources, which would facilitate children’s development, but would require a trade-off between increased income and reduced time spent with children. However, the work of psychologists does not support this hypothesis.
Rather, this work shows that mothers staying home to care for their infants in the first year, in conjunction with greater father involvement with young children, is a more beneficial solution than bringing more income into the household: children would thrive when high-quality parenting is available, even when the family is financially disadvantaged, and even though high income may facilitate good parenting.
Another important dimension of the problem is the involvement of fathers in bringing up children. Paternal involvement may offset the reduction in time spent by employed mothers with their children, thereby reducing the potential negative effects (on attachment insecurity) of maternal employment on child development. The moderating role of paternal involvement is associated with a lower incidence of internalized problems in children.
1.12. Child care
The EDEN longitudinal study analyzed a number of influences of child care arrangement (Gomajee et al. 2017).
1.12.1. Child care and emotional and relational development
Compared with children in informal care, those in group care had a lower likelihood of developing emotional and peer relationship disorders, whereas children in child care (maternal assistant) had a higher likelihood of developing behavioral disorders.
Children in group child care also had a greater likelihood of developing prosocial behavior. Children who, in particular, spent at least one year in group child care had the most beneficial effect, with girls benefitting more than boys. However, this association was not found among children from disadvantaged families.
Group child care thus seems to be linked to a protective effect against symptoms of emotional and peer relationship disorders and enables children to develop more prosocial behaviors, but not among children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Group child care for young children can therefore have long-term benefits for their behavioral and emotional development, especially if it is of high quality and lasts at least one year.
1.12.2. Child care and language
Few studies have described how different infant care experiences may be related to later cognitive, language and motor function, with most analyses focusing on samples from industrialized countries. A Chilean study (Narea 2020) analyzed cognitive, language, motor and vocabulary sub-scores from tests of 7,564 24- to 48-month-old children from the Chilean Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, which were compared on the basis of retrospective reports of child care arrangements during infancy.
Children who, as infants, had received one of four types of non-maternal care – center-based, grandparents, other relatives and non-family – were compared with those who had received exclusively maternal care.
Compared with those cared for by their mothers, children cared for in centers or by grandparents had higher total cognitive and language sub-scores, while those cared for by grandparents also had higher motor sub-scores. In contrast, children in non-relative care had lower vocabulary scores.
So to conclude:
– group child care is positively associated with the child’s global and linguistic development;
– grandparent care is positively associated with the child’s global, linguistic and motor development;
– non-parental care is negatively associated with the vocabulary of children;
– household poverty attenuates the association between non-maternal modes and child development.
1.12.3. Child care arrangements, academic success and gender
Gender differences in academic achievement have long been a societal and scientific concern. Recent trends indicate that, on average, girls outperform boys in grades and verbal performance in school and that boys’ averages exceed those of girls in spatial and mathematical tasks.
Such differences have been documented in many countries, but have been found to be particularly prevalent in North America and economically developed countries.
In the vast literature on this topic, relatively few studies have considered differences in the non-parental child care settings where boys and girls spend their early years. Yet more than three-quarters of preschoolers in the United States attend some type of non-parental child care and attendance is correlated with school readiness and achievement.
One study (Gordona 2020) showed gender differences in child care arrangements among preschoolers in the United States: in families of high socioeconomic status, boys were more likely than girls to attend centers, but the reverse was true in less affluent families. Parents’ general perspectives that center- or home-based child care is better for preschool development and safety also differed depending on whether the child studied was a boy or girl in families of varying socioeconomic status. Given that center-based child care attendance for preschoolers has been associated with school readiness, it is important to understand and address these gender disparities. It would be interesting to obtain data on this topic in France.
1.13. Ranking among siblings
The first psychologist to study the influence of sibling rank was a psychoanalyst, Adler, who placed the feeling of inferiority at the heart of the creation of neurosis. He believed that sibling rivalry and the dominance of the eldest sibling are at the root of psychological differences between siblings. Freud, on the other hand, attributed little importance to sibling rank, as he gave much more importance to the emotional relationship with the parents. It must also be said that Adler lived at a time when the eldest sibling was indeed very much favored, particularly with regard to inheritance, so that there was no indivision.
These privileges have disappeared today. On the other hand, what has not changed is the role of “opener”, to borrow a mountain metaphor, played by the eldest child and the task of inclusion into an already formed relational universe that falls to the youngest child. Sibling rank is therefore the variable that comes most naturally to mind when we think of the evolution of the structure and that of the non-shared family environment: the eldest is first alone, then has to “make way” for the youngest, the parents have more experience and so on.
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