Gender and Social Class Inequalities in Child Psychomotor Development: A Sociological Approach

By Inès Malroux, Lidia Panico, Michelle Kelly-Irving, Catriona Dutreuilh
English

During early childhood, the acquisition of bodily autonomy, language, and motor skills varies according to the social characteristics of children and their families. This article describes inequalities in child development by gender and social class, and at the intersection between these two social relationships. The study is based on ELFE (Étude longitudinale française depuis l’enfance) survey data collected from a vast cohort of more than 18,000 children aged around 3.5 years who were born in metropolitan France (mainland France and Corsica) and whose skills were assessed in the following areas: language, motor skills, self-help, social skills, letters, and numbers. Our results echo the literature on the differentiation of forms of learning that are most useful at school and highlight the social gradient of language development in particular; however, they also show that this social gradient is reversed for self-help.

Keywords

  • development
  • learning
  • gender
  • social class
  • inequalities
  • early childhood
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info