The quality of early child caregiving can strengthen a social and academic abilities even into adulthood, according to a new study published in journal Child Development (paywall).
Researchers analyzed data from a 30-year study, the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, to learn the effects that maternal sensitivity had on children as they became adults.
The lead study author, Lee Raby, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delaware, told Fox News that some questions he and his team sought to answer were whether the quality of caregiving in early childhood has long-term effects into adulthood and whether those effects decrease as children grow older.
The researchers involved in the Minnesota study recruited mothers in their third trimester who were living below the poverty line, reported The Huffington Post.
And once the 243 babies were born, the researchers observed the mothers and their babies during feeding and activity sessions about four times during the first 42 months.
Delaware Public Media reported that as the babies grew the researchers documented the levels of sensitivity, intrusiveness and detachment of the parents.
In analyzing the data, Raby told Fox News that his team found that highly sensitive parents "tend to respond to the child’s initiatives and cues and signals contingently and promptly, and when they’re involved in the interactions with the child, they’re warm and there’s a lot of positive emotion."
Also, once the babies became young children the researchers gave the students math, reading, and writing tests. The researchers for the Minnesota study also spoke with the students' teachers to determine their peer-to-peer competency and interactions.
The Huffington Post reported that when the children reached their 20s and 30s, the researchers for the Minnesota study met with or called each of the participants for an interview that discussed the participants' academic successes and romantic relationships.
“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,” Raby said to Delaware Public Media as he was explaining the new findings.
Raby told Fox News that typically the children who did not receive a high level of sensitive caregiving were more likely to drop out of school when they were teenagers and perform poorly on standardized tests.
“The reverse is also true: Individuals who received the most care were doing on average better on the academic tests and were more likely to go to college and graduate, and sometimes get postgraduate degrees," said Raby as reported by Fox News.
While the researchers feel that more research is necessary, parents in the meantime should try to be attentive to the sensitivity they give to their children.
"One of the things these findings may mean is that early parent–child and early caregiving experiences have lasting consequences for children's success in school and in relationships," Raby told the Huffington Post. "These effects don't go away as individuals get older and as they transition into more adult roles."
Email: kclark@deseretnews.com Twitter: @clark_kelsey3