Cognitive and Socioemotional Caregiving in Mothers, Fathers, and Children’s Other Caregivers from 51 Low- and Middle-Income Countries

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Cognitive and socioemotional caregiving practices are both important for child development, but little is known about the extent to which children’s different caregivers engage in the two types of practices or their relative effects on child development, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Design. The current study investigates how often mothers, fathers, and children’s other caregivers in 159,959 families from 51 LMICs engage in cognitive versus socioemotional caregiving practices, associations between these caregiving practices, and how the balance between these practices predicts child development. Results. Caregivers reportedly engage in more socioemotional than cognitive caregiving practices in all LMICs examined at all levels of national development. The more mothers, fathers, and other caregivers reportedly engage in cognitive caregiving practices, the more they engage in socioemotional parenting practices. Engaging in cognitive caregiving practices is the strongest predictor of early childhood development when considering cognitive caregiving, socioemotional caregiving, and the balance between the two types of caregiving. Conclusions. Promoting increased caregiver use of cognitive caregiving and integration of cognitive and socioemotional caregiving could close the gap between the number of cognitive and socioemotional caregiving activities parents engage in and potentially promote child development in LMICs.

AFFILIATIONS AND ADDRESSES

W. Andrew Rothenberg, Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy, 302 Towerview Road, Durham, NC, 27708. EMAIL: [email protected]. Marc H. Bornstein is at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, UNICEF, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures

Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. Neither author reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles

The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. UNICEF obtained informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Funding

This work was not supported by institutional funding.

Role of the Funders/Sponsors

No sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments

The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the authors’ Institutions is not intended and should not be inferred.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2023.2250827