The evolved developmental niche and child sociomoral outcomes in Chinese 3-year-olds

Abstract

Responsive parenting is known to lead to multiple positive child outcomes, including sociomoral development. We examined the extent to which additional caregiving practices are also critical for positive sociomoral outcomes in early childhood. We looked specifically at what we call the evolved developmental niche (EDN), as described for young children by anthropologists, which includes frequent touch, breastfeeding, caregiver responsiveness, multiple adult caregivers, play, and natural childbirth. We collected behaviour and attitude data on these practices from 383 mothers of 3-year-olds in China using a self-report maternal survey. Mothers also completed standardized measures of their child's behaviour regulation, empathy, and conscience. We found significant effects for most caregiving practices and attitudes on child outcomes after controlling for maternal income and education, and most effects remained significant after controlling for responsivity. These findings suggest that practices representative of the evolved developmental niche may be important, above and beyond responsivity alone, for fostering sociomoral development.

Keywords:

• Moral development
• Parenting
• Evolution
• Self-regulation
• Empathy
• Conscience

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to thank the Spencer Foundation and the University of Notre Dame for their support during the writing of this article. The data collection in Beijing, China was supported by a Seed Grant for Cooperative Projects and a Materials and Miscellaneous Research grant from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts to the second author. The work of the third author was supported by a Brachman-Hoffman Small Grant.

Notes

^1. Specifically, we had the following categories of household income: RMB < 15k, 2.8%; 15k–45k, 13.9%; 45k–80k, 12.0%; 80k–120k, 16.2%; 120k–160k, 17.5%;>160k, 37.6% (6.4RMB∼1USD).