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Caregiver Social Capital and Supportive Relationships are Associated with Better Child Social-Emotional Development

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Abstract

This study examined how different domains of social capital and of social support among caregivers are associated with social-emotional development in children ages 4–6 and how caregiver depressive symptoms modify these associations. Using a stratified random sample of preschools, data included a cross-sectional study of 1147 child-caregiver pairs (543 girls) in a low-income municipality in Brazil. Crude and adjusted linear regression models revealed that all domains of social support and two domains of social capital were associated with less social-emotional development delay in children. Given a significant proportion of children in low- and middle-income countries do not meet developmental milestones, strengthening caregiver social capital and support in these settings may have the potential to improve child social-emotional development.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Embu das Artes Municipality, the Embu das Artes Secretaries of Health and Education. This research would not have been possible without the cooperation and support from the Embu das Artes school board and caregivers who participated in our study. We would like to additionally thank Leah Salama for her help.

Funding

This work was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (Grant 466688/2014–8). The sponsor had no involvement in: the study design; the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; the writing of the report; or the decision to submit the article for publication.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

    Pamela J. Surkan, Soim Park & Kathleen Ridgeway

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, Brazil

    Marcos Ribeiro, Thiago M. Fidalgo & Sheila C. Caetano

  3. Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10023, USA

    Silvia S. Martins

Authors
  1. Pamela J. Surkan
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  6. Silvia S. Martins
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  7. Sheila C. Caetano
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Contributions

PJS conceived of the idea for this manuscript, led the writing, and contributed to the analytic plan. SP carried out the data analyses and contributed to the analytic plan and writing of the manuscript. KR contributed to the writing, analytic plan and interpretation of the results. MR and TMF helped oversee data collection and contributed to the interpretation of the results, SSM and SCC edited the manuscript and contributed to the interpretation of the results. SCC, SSM and PJS led the study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pamela J. Surkan.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The study followed ethical guidelines and received human subjects’ approval from the Research Ethics Committees at Universidade Federal de São Paulo and Columbia University.

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All authors participated substantively to the paper and have approved the final version of the manuscript for publication.

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Caregiver informed consent was obtained.

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Surkan, P.J., Park, S., Ridgeway, K. et al. Caregiver Social Capital and Supportive Relationships are Associated with Better Child Social-Emotional Development. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 54, 1102–1111 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01292-6

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