Description
Early motor skills, show considerable variability in terms of timing, sequence (order), and form. This variability is often ascribed to culture, as culture is expected to shape beliefs, practices, settings and indirectly influences child outcome (Adolph, Karasik, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2010; Super & Harkness, 2015). However, clear longitudinal evidence of these relations is lacking. Previous work has shown distinctive cultural models for Dutch and Israeli parents in their beliefs about infant motor development. Israeli parents valued stimulation and obtaining motor milestones in the 'correct' order more, while Dutch parents emphasized allowing infants to follow their own developmental pace (van Schaik, Oudgenoeg-Paz, & Atun-Einy, 2018). It remains unclear to what extent these differences are related to children's actual motor development. This study, therefore, examines the longitudinal relations between parental beliefs and child motor skills in the Netherlands and Israel. Participants included 85 parents of Dutch (N=43) and Israeli (N=42) infants. Parents filled in the Parental Beliefs about Motor Development questionnaire (Atun-Einy, Oudgenoeg-Paz, & van Schaik, 2017) during the third trimester of pregnancy and when the children were two months old. At age 10 months motor development was assessed using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS; Piper & Darrah, 1994) and parents reported which motor milestones were obtained. A MANOVA showed that Israeli children scored higher on the AIMS as a whole and on the prone, sit and stand subscales (F(4,72)=2.95, p=.026, pη2=.14). The fourth subscale, supine, showed a ceiling effect and was therefore not separately analyzed. Univariate tests showed that the difference was significant on all subscales and effects sizes were medium to large (pη2 range from .07 to .13). Furthermore, partial correlations show that parental beliefs at two months, but not during pregnancy, predict motor skills at 10 months. Specifically, parents who attribute more importance to obtaining advice on motor development have children with more advanced motor skills at 10 months (r=.19) and parents who attribute more importance to allowing the child to follow its own pace have children who score lower on the AIMS at age 10 months (r=- .23). Moreover, parental reports about motor milestones showed that the infants of parents who attribute greater importance to obtaining advice about motor development and reaching motor milestones in the 'correct' order at age two months more often engage in hands and knees crawl at age 10 months (both r values = .25). On the contrary, parents who attribute more importance to allowing the children to follow their own pace are less likely to have children who attained crawling on hands and knees at 10 months (r=-.32). Taken together, the results show that cross-cultural differences seen in motor development can, at least partially, be explained by differences in parental beliefs about motor development. The findings emphasize that parental beliefs should be considered within the constellation of factors affecting motor development. Furthermore, beliefs held after child birth seem more important for child outcomes than anticipatory beliefs held prior to child-birth.| Period | Jul 2020 |
|---|---|
| Event title | International Conference of Infant Studies: Virtual Congress, 2020 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Degree of Recognition | International |