Abtract

Although child rearing in humans is fundamentally cooperative, the bulk of carework of families in WEIRD countries majoritarily falls on women. Biases in caregiving are reflected in and influenced by social policies, like the unequal distribution of parental leave, and ideas about traditional family structures, gender and sex norms. Moreover, the landscape of theories and practices in child development research focuses primarily on mother-infant dyads, relying on an evolutionary framework to explain the development of differentiated behaviours between men and women. In this IMC Tuesday Talk, I will present some of the work I did during my PhD. I will propose a social, behavioural and cognitive framework for studying caregiving organisation in parents, emphasising the importance of studying the dynamic behaviour of the family as a whole. Focusing on crying, an infant signalling behaviour that affords care, I will discuss 3 studies. In the first study, I evaluated the prevalence and development of cry duration in early infancy. In the second one, I investigated the extent of fathers’ and mothers’ engagement in nighttime caregiving when mothers are on leave, and when fathers are on leave. Finally, in the last study, I assessed the existence of gender differences in sensitivity to infant signals in two different experimental contexts: while asleep at night, and while engaged in a dyadic non-cooperative setting. Does sensitivity to infant cries drive the gendered division of care work? Come to find out!

About the speaker

Arnault-Quentin Vermillet, Interacting Minds Centre and Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Aarhus University

Free of charge - All are welcome