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A recent study shows that talking to your toddler (0-4 years of age) will have a significant impact on their early cognitive development (Bergelson, 2023). That usually includes precursors like emotional and social adjustment.
This is the popular scientific reporting:
A mother’s level of education—a measure of social class—had no bearing on their children’s speech, the researchers found. They also saw no evidence that poorer parents spoke less to their kids. Even when the scientists looked for social class differences in only the North American children—a population where these links had been found time and time again—they found nothing.Why is early cognitive development, and its precursors emotional and social adjustment, important and is the result new?
When our ancestors roamed the Savannah for millions of years, being physically fit probably ment the difference between life and death. That means that we are the off-springs of those who were physically fit to survive in that landscape.
3.5 million years before the present, during the Pliocene (5.33 - 2.58 Mya), some of them changed their diet, adding bone marrow to 'the plate' (Mann, 2018; McPherron et al. 2010; Thompson et al. 2019). During the Pleistocene (2.58 Mya ~ 11 600 years ago), meat and cooking was introduced, making it easier to digest fat, meat, and starch (Carmody and Wrangham, 2009; Pobiner, 2013, 2016).
The implication was encephalization - a expansion of their brains, from the occipital lobes and forward, resulting in a larger neocortex (Aiello och Wheeler, 1995; Hublin et al. 2015).
That gave room for new mental capacities: executive functions including goal oriented prospection, and a cultural and grammatical language (Adornetti, 2016; Aiello och Dunbar; 1993; Ardila, 2008; Coolidge och Wynn, 2018; Everett, 2017; Gilbert och Wilson, 2007; Kaku, 2014; Lefebvre, 2012), and eventually, constructive memory (Ambrose, 1998, 2010; Schacter och Addis, 2007). That led to an acceleration of their mental development, which is demonstrated by findings of the Lion man (~30 000 BC; Dalton, 2003).
That followed by Göbekle Tepe (9 500 BC), the first agricultural revolution (~8000 BC), Milesian School of thought (~600 BC), the university of Bologna (~1100 AD), the renaissance (~1500 century), and the enlightenment (~1700 century; Pinker, 2018).
We still have the reptile and mammal brains that helped us survive during the Pliocene and the Pleistocene (Johnson, 2021). But our modern societies demand other qualities to make life achievements possible: emotional and social adjustment as well as higher cognitive abilities.
These mental capacities are not available at birth, but unpacks, adjusts, and develops during early upbringing, especially during the first four years of living (Gopnik, 2016). Consequently, the brain of a toddler takes ~ 65% of the energy they consume, compared to adults: 20-25% (Kusawa, 1998; Mink, Blumenschine, and Adams, 1981).
Bergelson et al. findings are consistent with previous findings by Hart och Risley (1995), who show that talking academically to your child during their first three to four years of living, gained them an astonishing ~30 000 000 more word perceptions compared to children who experience hostile and polemic communication.
In their study, Bergelson et al. down-played socio-economic factors in favor of socio-cultural ones (In my view, just like Hart and Risley). But they also seem to exclude fathers from their model, indicating a bias towards the view that mothers should be the primary care-takers during children's first years of living.
They also seem to exclude the quality of talking, that is, whether the mother used academic reasoning or applied hostile polemic communication.
In Finland, according to a statement from personnel at the Helsingfors police department, women's relational aggressiveness (psychological domestic violence) is a huge problem. And at a recent conference about children's legal rights in Helsingfors, Finland's child commissary pointed out that psychological domestic violence, and lethal domestic violence against young children, has increased. The host for the conference added that 40% of Finnish school children have reported that they have been victim of psychological domestic violence. The perpetrator of relational aggressiveness/psychological domestic violence is typically a woman (mother) (Crick och Grotpeter, 1995; Hyde, 2005).
One manifestation of relational aggressiveness is that if parents divorce, these women tend to file for sole custody of the children. Case studies from Finland show that personnel at the social service instigate those conflicts. In one case, the mother, whose behavior matched the behavior of other mothers, had a diagnosis - Borderline Personality Disorder (Zalewski et al. 2014. Addition: Ruffalo (2024; Österberg, 2022, 2023 (In Swedish)). Court personnel in Sweden and the US answer by discriminating against children's father relation in 75 % of the cases (Biringen och Harman, 2018; Elfver-Lindström, 1999; Schiratzki, 2008; Österberg, 2004). That seems also to be true for Finland.
Mother's psychological domestic violence seems to inhibit children's emotional and social as well as cognitive development. In May 2022, The Finnish ministry of education and culture reported that Finnish school children do not manage reading compression and numeracy, the latter is crucial for the rational and entrepreneurial thinking that was made possible with encephalization, and which is crucial to survive and thrive in a modern society.
The paradox is that children who experience father presence at 3 month of age, and during the school years, have better emotional and social adjustment as well as cognitive development compared to children who are raised by single mothers (Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004; Rolle et al. 2019).
Why?
Men (fathers) are not relational aggressive, but rather submissive, to a group or a family setting. The implication is that men communicate in a different way compared to women, probably closer to academic reasoning.
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