Fatherhood and Early Childhood Development: Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa

Rabie, Stephan; Skeen, Sarah; Tomlinson, Mark

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-51027-5_27

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Indeed, in West Africa, empowered women are those who manage the family in tandem with their partners [61]. In South Africa, more empowered women who enter the workforce have more engaged partners who spend more time with their children [62]. However, this relationship may be bidirectional, such that husbands are more engaged to help empower their partners: They treat them as equal, do not submit to social norms that promote gender inequity, and do not leave caregiving to women alone.…”

Section: Plos Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, intervention curricula should be designed to engage women's partners both as a caregiver and as an empowerment champion. Adapting health and education services to include both male and female caregivers can help increase male involvement in childcare [62]. Increasing shared caregiving can help build caregiver capacity and family support [75].…”

Section: Plos Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, interventions aiming to increase parental engagement and to promote women's empowerment will likely be more successfully if they also specifically target men. However, to avoid potential negative consequences, women's needs and preferences toward male involvement should also be considered in designing interventions [62].…”

Section: Plos Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

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Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

et al. 2021

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Background Approximately 40% of children 3 to 4 years of age in low- and middle-income countries have suboptimal development and growth. Women’s empowerment may help provide inputs of nurturing care for early development and growth by building caregiver capacity and family support. We examined the associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, early learning, and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Methods and findings We pooled data on married women (15 to 49 years) and their children (36 to 59 months) from Demographic and Health Surveys that collected data on child development (2011 to 2018) in 9 SSA countries (N = 21,434): Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Uganda. We constructed a women’s empowerment score using factor analysis and assigned women to country-specific quintile categories. The child outcomes included cognitive, socioemotional, literacy–numeracy, and physical development (Early Childhood Development Index), linear growth (height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) and stunting (HAZ <−2). Early learning outcomes were number of parental stimulation activities (range 0 to 6) and learning resources (range 0 to 4). The nutrition outcome was child dietary diversity score (DDS, range 0 to 7). We assessed the relationship between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, early learning, and nutrition using multivariate generalized linear models. On average, households in our sample were large (8.5 ± 5.7 members) and primarily living in rural areas (71%). Women were 31 ± 6.6 years on average, 54% had no education, and 31% had completed primary education. Children were 47 ± 7 months old and 49% were female. About 23% of children had suboptimal cognitive development, 31% had suboptimal socioemotional development, and 90% had suboptimal literacy–numeracy development. Only 9% of children had suboptimal physical development, but 35% were stunted. Approximately 14% of mothers and 3% of fathers provided ≥4 stimulation activities. Relative to the lowest quintile category, children of women in the highest empowerment quintile category were less likely to have suboptimal cognitive development (relative risk (RR) 0.89; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.80, 0.99), had higher HAZ (mean difference (MD) 0.09; 95% CI 0.02, 0.16), lower risk of stunting (RR 0.93; 95% CI 0.87, 1.00), higher DDS (MD 0.17; 95% CI 0.06, 0.29), had 0.07 (95% CI 0.01, 0.13) additional learning resources, and received 0.16 (95% CI 0.06, 0.25) additional stimulation activities from their mothers and 0.23 (95% CI 0.17 to 0.29) additional activities from their fathers. We found no evidence that women’s empowerment was associated with socioemotional, literacy–numeracy, or physical development. Study limitations include the possibility of reverse causality and suboptimal assessments of the outcomes and exposure. Conclusions Women’s empowerment was positively associated with early child cognitive development, child growth, early learning, and nutrition outcomes in SSA. Efforts to improve child development and growth should consider women’s empowerment as a potential strategy.

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Section: Plos Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Plos Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

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Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

et al. 2021

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“…The first challenge is based on the fact that much of the pioneering work was carried out in Western cultures or more accurately with Euro-American and middle class fathers. It was assumed that these findings would be universally valid across other cultures and generalizable to non-European American groups in North America and in Europe (see Rabie, Skeen, & Tomlinson, 2020;de Mendonca & Bussab, 2020). In the past several decades, these assumptions have been questioned on several fronts and have forced us to confront the variability in father behaviors across cultures and subcultures but also challenged some of our assumptions about the central features of the father role.…”

Section: Some Caveats and Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handbook of Fathers and Child Development

2020

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part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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“…In linking kinship support to UF and child outcomes, we see the transfer of social capital to children as being fundamentally conditioned by institutions such as marriage and kinship. While the bulk of investments come from mothers, who remain the primary caregivers in the African context, extended kin and, increasingly, fathers play important roles (Rabie, Skeen, and Tomlinson 2020). However, the investment by the father's kin is likely to be a function of their involvement in formalizing unions that produced the child (in the case of biological fathers) or raised the child (in the case of nonbiological fathers).…”

Section: From a Measure Of Status To A Focus On Social Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Union Formalization for a New Generation of Family Demography: A Case Study from Urban Kenya

Stoebenau,

Madhavan,

Kim

et al. 2024

Population & Development Rev

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Despite repeated calls for improved measures of marriage as a process in sub‐Saharan Africa, large‐scale surveys continue to rely on static marital status. As a result, there is an incomplete understanding of the effects of marriage on outcomes of interest. We use qualitative and survey data from a longitudinal study of 1,203 young mothers residing in informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya, to (1) describe the development of an innovative measure of union formalization (UF) defined as the steps through which a union attains social legitimacy; (2) compare UF with a conventional current marital status measure; (3) examine the distribution of UF steps across union history; and (4) examine the sequence and timing of pregnancy and childbearing within the UF process. We find UF steps indicative of both increasing individualization of marriage and the ongoing importance of kin involvement hold meaning. We demonstrate extensive heterogeneity in the sequence and extent of UF steps completed and interrogate the classification of premarital childbearing using sequence analysis. We argue that measuring UF is feasible and necessary for the next generation of family demography in Africa; UF measures facilitate understanding the linkages among family dynamics, health, and social stratification within the context of ongoing socioeconomic change.

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Fatherhood and Early Childhood Development: Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 4 publications

References 58 publications

Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

Handbook of Fathers and Child Development

Measuring Union Formalization for a New Generation of Family Demography: A Case Study from Urban Kenya

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