Global Early childhood development (ECD) has become a topic of interest for researchers and policy makers worldwide. This movement, which we call global ECD, claims to bring about economic and societal development by improving young children’s development, including their “brain structure and function”.
In 2018 the World Health Assembly introduced the Nurturing Care Framework, a plan for implementing ECD programs globally. The WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank jointly developed this framework, supported by research published in a series of articles in The Lancet.
A groundbreaking article published in Ethos criticises many of these claims through evidence from social sciences and research from Global South. They write that context-sensitive ethnographic research has been ignored by the ECD movement. Ethnography is a type of research where researchers become deeply immersed in the lives of their participants. The authors outlined three errors that the Global ECD claims make.
Errors in the Claims of Global ECD
CLAIM 1- Poverty leads to poor Early Childhood Development
According to the global ECD movement, many young children in so-called low- and middle-income countries “fail to reach their developmental potential”. They claim that this poor development during childhood is caused by poverty and bad parenting practices; this in turn leads to poverty and bad parenting in the next generation.
These claims of the global ECD ignore the following realities:
- The income threshold for poverty is determined from the US economy which is not a globally relevant economic indicator. It presupposes equal access to opportunities — that people have the same goals and they could all be equally wealthy if they all had the same brain.
- Such research around brain development focuses on the internal and ignores all structural factors like income status, gender discrimination, access to education and jobs. Lancet articles do not take these factors into consideration.
- The psychological tests used to measure these developmental standards are coming from WEIRD populations that have little generalisability worldwide. In other words, these standards of right and wrong development come from a few countries and are not applicable to all cultures. The ideas of poverty and development are portrayed in a way that shows the Global South only through a deficit lens.
- ECD interventions suggest there is only one right way to support children’s development and that other ways of upbringing are automatically deficient. This deficit view of non-Western countries reflects and furthers the global power hierarchies and psychological imperialism.
- The vast social and cultural diversity of non-WEIRD nations is overlooked. An example of this deficit view is the claim that poor mothers tend to be stressed and depressed. This is based on exactly two empirical studies, in Bangladesh and Jamaica. Generalising results from such a small sample to the whole ‘developing world’ shows how they are homogenising the non-WEIRD part of the world.
- Global ECD assumes that human brains can only develop properly under certain conditions that emerge in specific parts of the world/ high income nations while disregarding conditions of most of the parts of the world.
CLAIM 2- Mothers have most responsibility
The authors of the article write: “Global ECD is based on a nuclear family model with a focus on an adult primary caregiver, essentially the mother, and her dyadic relationship with the child… The model of the nuclear family with the mother as the primary caregiver—who is supposed to care sensitively and responsively for all of her young child’s needs—is taken from attachment theory. According to this theory, attachment is understood as an emotional bond between a child and a significant adult caregiver that emerges during the first year of life. Children may develop secure or various insecure patterns of attachment, depending on the sensitivity and responsiveness of the primary caregiver.”
The authors note that these claims of what is healthy parenting and the right way to raise children have been shown to be exceedingly problematic. Interestingly,
- The universal validity of the attachment theory is questionable. It does not account for the diversity in family setup, child rearing practices and caregiving arrangements. Like in India, there is active participation from not only the parents but also from grandparents, siblings, neighbours, and relatives. In an older interview, one of the author writes:
- There is little to no consideration of various forms of multiple caregiving and multiparty interactions.
According to the Lancet articles, 67–89 percent of parents in the global South do not “actively involve their children in cognitively stimulating activities”. What if parents don’t do it because others are doing it already?
CLAIM 3- All parents need to engage in a particular form of “responsive caregiving” and only certain types of play leads to “healthy” child development.
Responsive caregiving means that the primary caregiver (mostly mother) should always be attentive to the child’s cues and respond to them consistently, promptly, and appropriately… The Lancet articles claim that “responsive caregiving,” a type of parenting derived from attachment theory which is based on parenting in Euro-American cultures, “positively affect[s] the child’s cognitive and socioemotional development, their brain structure and function, and their physical health”. In other words, this one type of parenting is superior to the types of parenting found in the majority world.
However, in some societies people have developmental goals for their children that do not fit responsive caregiving. That does not mean they are not helpful and non-developmental. In her ethnographic research in Samoa, Jeannette Mageo shows how early distancing practices creates an interpersonal insecurity that helps children to focus on group bonding rather than one-to-one bonding. This model of childrearing fosters respect, responsibility, social awareness, and other qualities that are highly valued in many communities of the global South. The authors write:
“ECD researchers also assume that mothers or parents are children’s only noteworthy partners in play and their only providers of play materials and spaces.”
Ethnographic findings reveal that this reasoning relies on many untested beliefs and even misunderstandings. The authors add:
“Children in rural contexts often can participate to a much larger degree in the complex real-world surrounding them than children in urban contexts, who may spend most of their time in circumscribed spaces like a child’s room or playground, occupied with simplified replicas from the real world… In rural contexts, children may freely explore their environment and play with whatever is at hand, such as cast-off tools and utensils, old fishing nets, bones, and corn cobs—even tools with sharp edges”.
The authors have identified certain issues with the selection criteria of these scientific claims of ECD.
Problems in the Science of Global ECD
Assessment and training is done in WEIRD nations and simply applied to the whole of the Global — this is problematic. It promotes a narrow and biased understanding of good childrearing and also sets unrealistic educational and psychological outcome expectations. These expectations might not be culturally relevant or a priority for a group of people.
Parents have often been blamed for their child’s “poor development” without considering social, economic, or political factors. This assumes that Global South is all the same and fails to recognize the rich diversity within and among these communities. Use of randomised controlled trials overlook all possible kinds of social and political factors.
The reviewed literature of the Lancet articles mostly revolves around medical journals with no referencing from cultural and cross-cultural psychology or anthropology journals.
The Way Forward
Firstly, the gap between context sensitive ethnographic research and ECD science should be bridged. The anthropology of childhood, cultural developmental psychology, and social science scholarship in countries of the global South have ample such research. These fields look at the ways children interact with their families and communities, the cultural practices that shape their development, and the unique social norms that guide their upbringing.
Secondly, this ‘deficit view’ on Global South needs to be replaced with an all inclusive understanding of human behaviour. The intention of imposing Western values to the rest of the world needs to be put to rest.
Finally, to make critical work impactful, it should be published or referenced in key medical outlets of the ECD field and shared beyond academic circles to raise public awareness.
Article Link: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/etho.12379
Researcher Contact Information: [email protected]
Ayushi Jolly
Ayushi Jolly is a PhD Candidate in Social Psychology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her doctoral research focuses on exploring the neoliberal subjectivities of student migrants. Her research aims to foster a more holistic understanding of the human psyche that acknowledges the intricate interconnections between individual lives and the broader societal tapestry. She is dedicated to restoring the 'social' in social psychology.
Outside the academic sphere, she relishes the joy of travel and trekking and finds