taokshelf From Birth to Seven
- Author:
Davie, N.
Butler and C. Goldstein Longman, ?2.00
This is a further report from the National Children’s Bureau, of the National Child Development Study (1958, Cohort), and, as the title suggests, it is concerned with the inter-relationships between various aspects of childbirth and infancy on the one hand and scholastic adjustment and attainment on the other when children have been attending infant schools for two years.
It is a known difficulty of longitudinal studies that, by the time the results are available, society and social conditions may well have changed. In a period of rapidly accelerating change, as at the present, the difficulty- is even more pronounced. As a result, it is only too easy to question the variables chosen for the study in 1958 and to ask what different variables might now be used. It is interesting that the smoking habits of the mothers of this sample were investigated since this provided interesting data on the harmful effects which were produced, and moreover, the extent to which these effects seemed to be cumulative.
As might be expected social class factors were demonstrated to have major effects on children’s progress and adjustment but the complexity of the relationship was respected and attempts were made, quite successfully, to isolate the varying effects of different aspects of social class membership. The reasoning, however, is statistical rather than psychological, and concerned with measurable attributes rather than developmental processes. (The details of the statistical material appear in the higher priced hard back version of the book.) The most novel findings in the book stem from the careful study of the medical aspects of childbirth and development and the ways in which these are shown to be related to what children have achieved at the age of seven.
The book concludes with a discussion of ‘at risk’ registers. The data for inclusion on the list would be available at the birth of a child, and the criteria would be derived from the analyses of the research project reported in this book.
Although such a register would seem to make good sense on statistical grounds, it might be less than practical in, for example, a working class area, in which case many children would almost automatically, be ‘at risk’. Moreover, we do not know the extent to which a classification as ‘at risk’ might in the long run be disadvantageous to the very child whom it sought to help.
This is a thoughtful and, in some ways, . thought-provoking book.
People who are concerned with the physical and educational development of children would find it both informative and instructive. They might also be rather surprised at some of the links which are shown to obtain from birth to seven.
Ravenette
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