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Parenting, Environment, and Early Child Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Handbook of Applied Developmental Science in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This chapter describes the contemporary situation of children in sub-Saharan Africa with successive foci on child growth, the home environment, parenting, and discipline using data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS). The MICS is a nationally representative, internationally comparable household survey implemented to examine protective and risk factors of child development in developing countries. We address how 14 developing and under-researched countries in sub-Saharan Africa vary with respect to these central indicators of children’s experiences and development. The chapter concludes with some policy implications from these findings.

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Acknowledgments

We thank A. Hancioglu, Y. Nonoyama-Tarumi, Y. Ota, O. Petrovic, and N. Ulkuer. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, NICHD. Correspondence to: Marc H. Bornstein, Child and Family Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development , National Institutes of Health, Rockledge 1, Suite 8030, 6705 Rockledge Drive, MSC 7971, Bethesda MD 20892-7971, USA. Email: Marc_H_Bornstein@nih.gov.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Marc H. Bornstein & Diane L. Putnick

  2. Department of Psychology, Maseno University, Kisumu, Kenya

    Paul Oburu

  3. Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Jennifer E. Lansford

  4. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    Kirby Deater-Deckard

  5. Family and Human Dynamics Research Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Robert H. Bradley

  6. Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA

    Riku Moriguchi

  7. UNICEF, New York, NY, USA

    Pia Rebello Britto

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  1. Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Amina Abubakar

  2. Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Fons J.R. van de Vijver

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Bornstein, M.H. et al. (2017). Parenting, Environment, and Early Child Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Abubakar, A., van de Vijver, F. (eds) Handbook of Applied Developmental Science in Sub-Saharan Africa. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7328-6_2

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