Parents knowledge about the development of children aged 2 to 6 years old.

Abstract

Based on the assumption that parental knowledge about child development influences the way parents understand the behavior of their children, parenting actions and child development, this study aimed to: 1) analyze what parents know about the development of children aged between 2 and 6 years old and the security they have on this knowledge; 2) explore the variability of this knowledge according to characteristics such as age, sex, parents’ level of education and number of children; 3) know if parental knowledge about child development predicts pleasure in parenting. For the purpose, it was used a socio-demographic questionnaire and the Portuguese versions of the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory-P [KIDI-P] (MacPhee, 1996; Portuguese adaptation by Nobre-Lima, Vale-Dias, Mendes, Mónico, & MacPhee, 2014) and of the Pleasure in Parenting Scale [PPS] (Fagot, 1995; Portuguese adaptation: Taborda, Vale-Dias, Aguiar, & Morais, 2011). KIDI-P is a one-dimensional scale of 58 items which are scored as correct, incorrect or not sure. Three summary scores can be calculated: a t t e m p t e d , a c c u r a c y and a t o t al. The former is related to confidence in ones knowledge, the second represents exposure to solid, normative information about infants and the last reflects the percentage of correct answers out of all items on the KIDI-P . PPS is a 10 items unidimensional scale evaluating the gratification in parenting.The sample has around 500 parents, on average on their thirties, both sexes, and not couples. Results show that parental knowledge about child development predicts pleasure in parenting. Results also point to some interesting differences in the KIDI-P summary scores between mothers and fathers and according to the number of children and educational background, that can be suggestive of the importance of addressing the sources of knowledge about developmental information and its rigorous disclosure when working with parents, for example in educational or pediatric contexts.

Adults’ perceptions of forgetful children: the impact of child age, domain, and memory type

“…The present study demonstrated that adults' perceptions of children are affected by the child's age (4 or 10 years old), the domain of memory error (academic or social), and to some extent the type of memory error (PM or RM), and that these ratings differ depending on the amount of prior experience an individual has with children (similar to Furnham et al, 2003;Vale-Dias & Nobre-Lima, 2018). Children, regardless of age, who make social memory errors are perceived more negatively than when they make academic errors.…”

“…Forgetfulness in academic contexts seems to be viewed more normatively as children are rated as more likely to repeat these errors in the future. Finally, greater amounts of experience with children led to participants rating children more favourably in our trait composite overall suggesting that individuals with more knowledge of child development might be less critical of forgetfulness as they might be aware it is still developing during early and middle childhood (Furnham et al, 2003;Vale-Dias & Nobre-Lima, 2018).…”

“…There is also mounting evidence to suggest that parents tend to have more knowledge than non-parents of child development (Karraker & Evans, 1996;Vale-Dias & Nobre-Lima, 2018, Zand et al, 2015 and that parents tend to perform better on surveys based on child development compared to non-parents (Bornstein et al, 2010;Furnham et al, 2003; but also see Botey et al, 2017). These results suggest that parents, or those with more experience with children, may have a better understanding of child development compared to non-parents.…”

“…The amount of experience that the participant had with children had a significant impact on their trait composite score, F(1, 191) = 14.15, p < .001, ηp 2 = .07, indicating that the more experience with children a participant had, the more positively they rated children after making a PM error. Thus, adults with more experience with children might be more familiar with children's memory capabilities and more lenient with their judgments than those with less experience with children (Karraker & Evans, 1996;Vale-Dias & Nobre-Lima, 2018, Zand et al, 2015.…”

“…Interestingly, individuals' amount of experience with children did not influence judgements of blame or how likely the error would be repeated in the future. Past research has suggested that more experience with children has a positive impact on individuals' perceptions of children (e.g., Morey & Gentzler, 2017) and that it improves their knowledge of children's cognitive abilities (Bornstein et al, 2010;Vale-Dias & Nobre-Lima, 2018). Thus, it seems that more experience with children makes individuals more likely to rate children favourably.…”