[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/25599_SENSITIVEPARENTING.mp3|titles= Delaware Public Media's Eli Chen speaks to Lee Raby, post-doctoral researcher on the Infant Caregiver Project at University of Delaware.]
A new study involving a University of Delaware researcher shows that sensitive caregiving in early childhood is connected to lasting social and academic benefits in adulthood.
Released on December 18 through the journal Child Development, researchers sought to discover how much the effects of sensitive parenting sustained in adulthood. Lee Raby, a post-doctoral researcher at UD, used a dataset that tracked the lives of 243 children in poverty.
During the subjects’ childhood, the behavior of the parents, whether they were sensitive, detached or intrusive, was documented. Decades later, the subjects were interviewed as adults about their romantic relationships and academic performance. Not only did scientists find that the effects of sensitive parenting remained strong into adulthood -- they also found that sensitive parenting was a major predictor of academic success.
“Early sensitivity was as good of a predictor of academic competence when they were 32 as it was as a predictor of academic performance on standardized tests when they were about age 7," said Raby. "These effects were not going away even though when we were now looking 30 years out.”
Sensitive caregiving in the first few years of a child’s life is important because that’s the stage when the brain is laying down the foundation for future development, said Raby.
“New neural cells are still being created and new connections are being made in between the cells," said Raby. "And all of that is very open to environmental influence. It’s not a fixed biological process. The working hypothesis is that care children are receiving in these early years are potentially shaping the brain.”
Raby’s work is based on his research as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. He hopes to continue his research on the effects of parenting with more focus on the brain’s biology.